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SESAME AND LILIES 

TWO LECTURES BY 

JOHN RUSKIN 

EDITED IVITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

ROBERT KILBURN ROOT 

Tutor in English at Yale College 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1901 



^K 






IHt LIBRARY Of7 \^^ 

OCJGRESS, ' ^ 

Two CoHta Received 

NOV. ? 1901 

COPVRIQHT ENTRY 

CLASS «. XXc. No. 

^ ^ If O 

COPY a 



Copyright, iqoi, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO. 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction 

Life of Ruskin v 

Sesame and Lilies xiii 

Sesame and Lilies 

Of Kings' Treasuries i 

Of Queens' Gardens 67 

Notes 

Of Kings' Treasuries iii 

Of Queens' Gardens 130 



PREFACE. 

The present edition is based upon experience 
gained in reading Sesame and Lilies with a class of 
college freshmen, and is intended for use in colleges 
or in the. more advanced grades of the secondary 
school. The notes are, for the most part, explana- 
tory rather than critical; having as their object a 
thorough elucidation of the author's thought, rather 
than an appreciation of its value, since it is believed 
that this latter end is better attained by the class- 
room discussion. Merely verbal comment, and in 
general such information as is readily obtainable 
in a good dictionary, has been, in the main, ex- 
cluded. In the case of literary allusions, the 
more obvious are not noticed : a student is rightly 
offended at being informed that Achilles is the hero 
of Homer's Iliad. On the contrary, even the most 
obvious of Ruskin's many Biblical allusions are ex- 
plained, since the editor has found that such expla- 
nation is, unfortunately, necessary. It would have 
been easy to multiply parallels from Ruskin's other 
works illustrating the thought of the present essay, 
but they have been admitted only where they aid 
materially in the understanding of the passage 
under consideration. In a word, the edition is 
selective rather than exhaustive. 

The text followed is that of the Brantwood 



IV PREFACE. 

edition, the American authorized edition of Rus- 
kin's works. I am indebted to ColHngwood's Life 
of Riiskin for the matter contained in such por- 
tions of my introductory sketch of Ruskin's Hfe as 
are not based directly on Prccterita. I have 
already acknowledged in my notes an occasional 
indebtedness to the work of previous editors. To 
Professor Albert S. Cook, who has read my work 
in proof, and to my friend and colleague, Dr. 
Charles G. Osgood, I gratefully acknowledge my 
indebtedness for many helpful suggestions. 

R. K. R. 

August 30, 1 901. 



INTRODUCTION. 

LIFE OF RUSKIN. 

John Ruskin was born in London on the 8th of 
February, 1819, and in London, or the neighboring 
suburb of Dulwich, he spent the best years of his 
Hfe. Yet in blood and in character he was a 
Scotchman, and inherited from his Scotch parents 
the keen, imaginative intellect and intense moral 
earnestness which have always distinguished the 
race. Ruskin's father was a prosperous wine mer- 
chant, who, beginning business with no capital but 
a legacy of paternal debt, was able by hard work 
to pay off the debts, for which he felt himself 
morally responsible, and to amass a very consid- 
erable fortune. Ruskin was able to write over his 
grave that he was ' an entirely honest merchant.' 
He was more than this: a man of culture and 
refinement ; a lover of the best in literature and 
art ; a devoted admirer of nature ; so that the 
stern Scotch Puritanism of Ruskin's home was 
tempered by the gentle influences of a broader 
culture. 

Mrs. Ruskin seems to have been a stricter Puri- 
tan than her husband, and to her was intrusted the 
early training of the only child. ' My mother's gen- 
eral principles of first treatment,' Ruskin writes, 



Vi INTRODUCTION. 

* were to guard me with steady watchfulness from 
all avoidable pain or danger; and for the rest, to 
let me amuse myself as I liked, provided I was 
neither fretful nor troublesome. But the law was 
that I should find my own amusement.' The inven- 
tions of the toy-maker were, in Mrs. Ruskin's 
eyes, part of the vanity of this world. At first she 
allowed none at all, but later admitted a cart and 
ball, and a set of wooden blocks. ' With these 
modest, but, I still think, entirely sufficient posses- 
sions, and being always summarily whipped if I 
cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the 
stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods 
of life and motion; and could pass my days con- 
tentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the 
colors of my carpet ; — examining the bricks in the 
opposite houses ; with rapturous intervals of ex- 
citement during the filling of the water-cart, 
through its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron 
post at the pavement edge.' 

When Ruskin was about four years old the fam- 
ily removed to a suburban residence at Heme Hill, 
near what was then the country village of Dul- 
wich. Here the pleasures of the brick wall and the 
watering-cart were exchanged for the more varied 
delights of a garden, which seemed to the lonely 
little boy a veritable paradise. ' The differences of 
primal importance which I observed between the 
nature of this garden and that of Eden, as I had 
imagined it, were that in this one all the fruit was 
forbidden; and there were no companionable 



INTRODUCTION. ^ Vll 

beasts/ He had no playmates, and even his father 
and mother seemed to him merely visible forces of 
nature. 

His earliest lesson-book was the Bible. At his 
mother's knee he learned long chapters of it by 
heart and read it aloud, hard names and^all, every 
year. ' To that discipline — patient, accurate, and 
resolute — I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, 
which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of 
my general power of taking pains, and the best part 
of my taste in literature.' There is probably no 
English writer since Bunyan whose style is so 
strongly colored, in substance and in phrase, with 
reminiscences of the Bible. For other reading he 
had the Waverley Novels and Pope's Homer, with 
•Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress for Sun- 
days ; and on winter evenings the elder Ruskin 
would often read aloud from Shakespeare or Cer- 
vantes or Walter Scott, while the boy John, en- 
sconced in a little niche by the fireside, with his 
bowl of bread and milk before him, listened or not 
as he pleased; unconsciously learning to love the 
best in literature, tuning his ear to the harmonies 
and cadences of noble English. 

Living in the company of great writers, Ruskin 
began at a surprisingly early age to write himself. 
His first dated poem was written before he was 
quite seven ; all that he saw and did was chronicled 
in prose or rime, and laboriously written out in 
Roman letters in imitation of the printed page. 
When nine he began a work called ' Eudosia, a 



Vlll IN TROD UCTION. 

Poem on the Universe,' and in the following year 
he presented to his father, as a birthday present, an 
elaborately printed volume entitled ' Battle of 
Waterloo, a Play in Two Acts with other Small 
Poems by John Ruskin.' As he learned how to 
draw, illustrations by the author were added ; and 
the volumes took on the appearance of ' real books.' 

Fortunately for Ruskin and for us, his horizon 
was not limited by the low hills of Surrey. 
Every summer a comfortable post chaise drew 
up before the house at Heme Hill, and father 
and mother and son started on a two months' drive 
through England or Scotland. The object of these 
journeys was primarily to get orders for Mr. Rus- 
kin's wine trade, but the wine merchant seems to 
have cared quite as much for scenery as for orders, 
so that the boy w^as able, while still young, to see the 
loveliest parts of his own land. And when their 
journey took them near some great nobleman's 
estate, Mr. Ruskin would show his son the house 
and whatever pictures it might contain. If we see 
in Ruskin's later life an intense love for the highest 
beauty, of nature or of art, we can trace it directly 
to the peculiarly fortunate circumstances of his 
childhood. 

On his fourteenth birthday his father's business 
partner gave Ruskin a copy of Rogers' Italy, a 
volume of indifferent descriptive verse, but illus- 
trated by the great Turner. The book seems to 
have exerted the greatest influence on Ruskin's life, 
for it not only deepened in him the love of nature. 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

and revealed to him her grander phases, but filled 
him with admiration for the artist whom he was to 
defend so ardently in Modern Painters. In the 
following summer the annual tour through Great 
Britain was replaced by a Continental tour, which 
included Switzerland ; and Ruskin was able to fol- 
low Turner through his Alpine passes, imitating 
with the crow-quill the master's fine vignettes. 

In October of 1836 Ruskin matriculated at Christ 
Church, Oxford. Except that he won the New- 
digate prize in poetry in 1839, his course was not 
extraordinarily brilliant, and in 1840 he was com- 
pelled by bad health to leave without his degree, 
which was not received till 1842. 

From this point on Ruskin's life, all that is most 
vital of it, is to be found in his books. We shall 
look at it only in its broad features. 

He found himself in possession of a good edu- 
cation, a generous income, and boundless energy. 
He had no taste for business, nor for the Church — 
to which his mother had fondly dedicated him ; he 
followed his inclinations and became an art critic. 
From 1842 to i860 he was at work on Mod- 
ern Painters and the other art studies which grew 
out of it. We see him living quietly with his par- 
ents, studying and writing, making frequent, and 
sometimes extended, visits to the Continent; pa- 
tiently seeking out the meaning of some old painting 
by a half-forgotten master; eagerly reading the 
history of mediaeval Venice in the stones of her 
churches and palaces, or searching out God's provi- 



X IN TROD UC TION. 

dence in the rocks and glaciers of the towering 
Alps. All this while his fame and the popularity 
of his works were increasing; the public bought his 
books and flocked to his lectures, though there were 
many to combat his novel theories. 

It is necessary to touch on a tragic episode in this 
period of Ruskin's life, which, though affecting his 
activity but slightly, cast its gloom upon his soul. 
He was married on April lo, 1848, to a beautiful 
Scotch girl. The marriage seems to have been on 
both sides a matter of parental arrangement. It is 
very certain that their temperaments were ill- 
suited to each other, for Mrs. Ruskin was a lover 
of gay social life, and little in sympathy with her 
husband's quiet, thoughtful ways. In 1854 she 
left him. Save that he ought never to have mar- 
ried her, Ruskin was apparently without blame. 

The year i860 marks the turning-point in Rus- 
kin's life, when he ceased to tell people what they 
should admire, and tried to tell them what they 
should be. The importance of this change and the 
reason for it are discussed later on. The period 
was necessarily one of great spiritual storm and 
stress. The evil of the world loomed up before 
him in all its gloom and apparent hopelessness. 
Like his great successor, Tolstoi, he turned his 
back on his earlier work; recanting many of his 
earlier doctrines and dogmas, setting his face reso- 
lutely toward the sterner problems of life. Though 
at times he wrote again of art, it was with a more 
distinctly ethical and religious purpose. 



IN TROD UC TION. XI 

Ruskin's social reform finds external expression 
in the Guild of St. George, the story of which is to 
be found in Fors Clavigera, the series of monthly 
letters written to workingmen between 187 1 and 
1884. The guild was an attempt to put into prac- 
tice the theories of his political economy. As this 
economy rests on the postulate that ' there is no 
wealth but life,' the true welfare of its members 
was the first care of the guild. Co-operation was 
to replace competition in the affairs of the company. 
Both in manufacture and in agriculture, machine 
labor was to be replaced by the healthier and more 
intelligent labor of the hands. Schools and mu- 
seums were to be maintained for the benefit of those 
employed. Ruskin, generous always with his 
money, contributed a tenth of all his possessions, 
and others were found to take a part in the scheme, 
so that land was bought and the guild actually 
started. But its success has not been great except 
indirectly, as an example. 

From 1869 to 1879, and again for a short 
time in 1883-84, Ruskin held the Slade Pro- 
fessorship of Art at Oxford, where his lectures 
were thronged by enthusiastic admirers. His 
power over his students is shown by an anecdote of 
this period. There was a bad bit of country road 
near Oxford, which the local authorities were too 
lazy to repair. Ruskin spoke of it in one of his 
lectures, and called for volunteers. The volun- 
teers came, and, dressed in old clothes and armed 
with picks, professors and students sallied out and 



Xll L\r TROD UCTION. 

mended the road, despite the jeers of the unre- 
generate. 

The last years of Ruskin's Hfe, darkened by re- 
peated attacks of brain fever, which left him ever 
weaker in body and mind, were spent at Brantwood, 
the quiet home on the shores of Coniston Water in 
Lancashire. The house stands on a hillside, em- 
bowered in trees, and from the front windows Rus- 
kin could look down a grassy slope to the lake, and 
on the farther shore could watch the mists gather 
about the summit of Coniston Old Man. Here, at 
Brantwood, Ruskin died on January 20, 1900, and 
in the churchyard of the near-by village of Coniston 
he lies buried — an easy drive from Wordsworth's 
quiet grave at Grasmere. 

Among the many gifts of flowers which came 
from all parts of the kingdom, and from all ranks 
of society, was one from the village tailor at Conis- 
ton. The man had felt Ruskin's power, and so he 
sent with his flowers a card inscribed with the 
words : ' There was a man sent from God, whose 
name was John.' The difference in externals be- 
tween that John of the camel's hair and the leathern 
girdle, uttering his cry 'in the wilderness, and the 
cultured John of modern England is great enough ; 
but Ruskin is, none the less, a prophet, and his 
message, too, is, ' Repent, for the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand.' We are told that a Yorkshire farmer 
tried one day to tell him how much he had enjoyed 
his books. Almost fiercely Ruskin interrupted him : 
* I don't care whether you enjoyed them ; did they 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

do you any good ? ' To be good and to see and 
love the kingdom of God, which is always at hand 
— that is Ruskin's message. ' All my work,' he 
says, ' is to help those who have eyes and see not.' 



SESAME AND LILIES. 
I. 

RusKiN Stands before us as an original and in- 
spiring art critic, a zealous social reformer, and a 
master of nineteenth century English prose. To be 
sure, he has written much that is neither art criti- 
cism nor political economy — treatises, more or less 
scientific, on geology and mineralogy, on botany, and 
on the interpretation of Greek myths. But these 
other phases of his activity are distinctly subordi- 
nate ; it is as art critic that he is chiefly known ; it 
was as reformer and political economist that he 
wished to be remembered. 

* What has an artist to do with economics ? ' was 
the general cry, when Ruskin ceased to tell his 
countrymen what in nature and in art they should 
admire, and sternly showed them what they should 
do and be. And to-day, also, the combination seems 
at first sight incongruous. It is easy to see how, in 
a discussion of landscape painting, the critic might 
be led to consider more closely the forms of trees 
and mountains, and so come naturally to his botany 
and geology ; but it is surely a long leap to ques- 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

tions of wages and the factory laws. None the less, 
Ruskin's life work is, in its essentials, consistent 
and unified. When one understands his fundamen- 
tal principles of art and of economics, the com- 
bination seems not only reasonable, but inevitable. 
It is not easy to place a just valuation on Rus- 
kin's art criticism. One must surely beware of 
taking it as an infallible guide ; many of Ruskin's 
individual judgments seem capricious and arbi- 
trary. Yet it would be hard to suggest an author 
who can so well arouse an enthusiasm for, and an 
intelligent interest in, the best of painting and 
architecture; it would be hard to name a writer 
who has exerted half so great an influence on the 
aesthetic tastes of the English-speaking world. In 
principle, at least, Ruskin's method of criticism is 
excellent. It consists in a constant reference to 
laws and first principles, drawn, in most instances, 
from nature — nature inanimate and the nature of 
man, as outward and visible manifestations of the 
Divine Nature. So we have in Modern Painters 
an elaborate theory of aesthetics, with chapters on 
the ' imagination penetrative ' and the ' imagination 
contemplative.' We have a close examination of 
the form of waves and clouds and mountains. Art 
which does not follow the forms and the laws of 
nature, material or spiritual, is out of harmony 
with the Divine Nature, and therefore bad. The 
theory, as Ruskin develops it, is logical and con- 
vincing, and offers a welcome escape from the base- 
less likes and dislikes of the mere impressionist. It 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

is in his application of the theory to individual cases 
that he ceases to convince. At times we feel the 
presence of his personal likes and prejudices, col- 
oring and distorting the argument. It would not 
be far from truth to say that the enduring value 
of Ruskin's art criticism, as art criticism, lies in 
the immense suggestiveness of its theories and in- 
terpretations, rather than in its individual dicta. 

But, after all, perhaps its highest value lies not 
so much in its artistic as in its ethical teaching; it 
is an impassioned appeal for better and nobler liv- 
ing. For, to Ruskin, art and morality are abso- 
lutely and indissolubly united. The most funda- 
mental principle of his criticism is that of the de- 
pendence of art on moral character. All art which 
is true art, sincere and vital, comes from the soul of 
the artist : if the soul is noble, the art will be noble ; 
if the soul is mean, the art will be mean. ' Men do 
not gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from this- 
tles.' Of course it is not enough that a man should 
have a noble soul : he must have, also, what Rus- 
kin calls the art gift; he must possess that sen- 
sitiveness of eye and ear, that fineness of expression, 
which distinguish the born artist. It often hap- 
pens that this art gift is found in men of unholy 
life ; but even here art is not independent of mo- 
rality, for without generations of moral ancestors 
the art gift itself is impossible.* 

Now it may be possible for a noble and pure 
painter to preserve his own nobility and purity, and 

* See further, note on 11:30. 



XV i IN TROD UC TION. 

to paint great pictures, even in a corrupt age; it 
may be possible for a Milton to write his great 
poem, though fallen on evil days. But when we 
come to the distinctly social art of architecture, the 
case is different ; for the building of a house, much 
more for the building of a great cathedral, we need 
the co-operation of many hands, perhaps of the 
whole community through several generations. A 
national architecture reflects the virtues and the 
vices of a whole nation. The character of the an- 
cient Athenians may be read in their Parthenon. 
The streets of modern London, mean and squalid or 
soullessly magnificent — what do they reflect of the 
character of modern society? 

From an art theory such as this, in which the 
ethical and social element is so prominent, it is an 
easy step to a theory of economics which, like that 
of Ruskin, lays its stress, not on the accumulation 
of material wealth, but on the ennobling of human 
life and human character. If national art implies 
a nobility of national life, we must seek first the 
noble life. 

This change in Ruskin's work was announced to 
the public by the appearance of Unto This Last 
in the Cornhill Magazine, late in the summer of 
i860; but for some time previous the burden of 
life's mystery had been weighing upon him. The 
strict Protestant orthodoxy of his parents was be- 
coming impossible to him; he had not yet reached 
the broader, more catholic Christianity of his later 
life. The hypocrisy and injustice of the world be- 



IN TROD UCTION. XVll 

came every day more apparent. What was he ac- 
compHshing by his work? The pubhc read his 
books and flocked to his lectures ; they were glad 
to know what pictures they should admire, and what 
condemn. They enjoyed the splendid music of his 
sentences. But what effect was it having on their 
lives? Ruskin felt that he, too, was come that they 
might have life, and have it more abundantly. 

As we must have life, and a noble life, for the 
production of art, so, too, there must be a no- 
bility of soul for the right appreciation of it. * As 
I myself look at it ' — he is speaking of a picture by 
Turner — ' there is no fault or folly of my life — and 
both have been many and great — that does not rise 
up against me, and take away my joy, and shorten 
my power of possession, of sight, of understanding. 
And every past effort of my life, every gleam of 
Tightness or good in it, is with me now, to help me 
in the grasp of this art and its vision. So far as I 
can rejoice in or interpret either, my power is owing 
to what of right there is in me.' '^ It was because 
England seemed to have despised life and * concen- 
trated its soul on pence,' that Ruskin ceased speak- 
ing to it of art, and put on him the mantle of the 
prophet and reformer. 

It is not my purpose to speak at any length of 
Ruskin's social theories. They are all summed up 
in his fundamental maxim, ' There is no wealth 
but life.' It is not territory which makes the 
strength of a nation ; no, nor cities and factories and 

\ * Queen of the Air, § iii. 



XVill INTRODUCTIOISf. 

railway systems. That nation is greatest which 
has the most abundant, national life. And so all 
practical questions are approached by Ruskin not 
with the question ' Which will pay best ? ' but 
' Which method will best develop the life of those 
concerned ? ' What shall it profit a nation if it 
shall gain the whole world, and lose its own life? 

I have tried to show that Ruskin's theory of 
economics is the natural and consistent outgrowth 
of his theories of art. It was but a broadening of 
his horizon, and a growing sense of values, which 
made him abandon art as an end in itself, and make 
of it a means to a greater end. 



11. 

The two lectures composing Sesame and Lilies 
were delivered at Manchester in December, 1864,"^ 
and were published with a short preface in the 
following year. In 1869 was added a third lecture, 
entitled The Mystery of Life and its Arts, and in 
1 87 1 the enlarged work was republished with a new 

* Kings' Treasuries was given at the Rusholme Town Hall, 
Manchester, December 6, 1864, in aid of a library fund for the 
Rusholme Institute. Queens^ Gardens was given December 14, 
at the Town Hall, King Street, Manchester, in aid of schools for 
Ancoats, a thickly populated quarter of the city. An examination 
of the reports of the lectures in the Manchester daily papers of 
December 7 and 15 shows that the original lectures were consid- 
erably revised before publication in book form. On both evenings 
the hall was crowded with the most influential people of the city, 
and the speaker was frequently interrupted by applause. 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

and longer preface. Both the preface and the ad- 
ditional lecture have a tone of gloom, almost of de- 
spair. In 1882 Ruskin withdrew them both, and 
reprinted the first edition with a third preface. In 
the present edition I have followed the text of 1882, 
though omitting the preface. 

The book comes, then, just after the turning- 
point in Ruskin's work, and though it deals scarcely 
at all with either art or economics, combines, better 
perhaps than any other of his works, the two ele- 
ments of his teaching — the intense love for nature 
and the arts, and the burning zeal for righteous- 
ness ; for it treats of that true ' advancement in 
life,' for man and for woman, which is the burden of 
his whole prophecy. In the preface of 1882 Rus- 
kin says of it : ' I have only to add farther, respect- 
ing the book, that it was written while my energies 
were still unbroken and my temper unfettered ; and 
that, if read in connection with Unto This Last, 
it contains the chief truths I have endeavored 
through all my past life to display, and which, under 
the warnings I have received to prepare for its 
close, I am chiefly thankful to have learnt and 
taught.' 

The first lecture treats of books in their relation 
to the conduct of life. ' What and how to read,' 
* the treasures hidden in books ; the way we find 
them and the way we lose them ' — this is the sub- 
ject of Sesame, and, in his development of the 
theme, Ruskin applies to the art of literature the 
same ethical principles which he applies to the art 



XX INTR OD UC TlOISr. 

of the painter or the architect. ' Whatever bit of 
a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently 
done, that bit is his book or his piece of art.' Such 
is the ' good book for all time ' which alone de- 
serves our serious attention. Such is the king's 
treasure-house which may yield us the best of all 
wealth — a fuller, more abundant life. 

As honesty and benevolence are necessary in the 
author of a true book, so are they necessary in us 
his readers ; there must be in us an essential right- 
ness of heart, or the work will seem to us no more 
than a ' dusty imagery.' The treasure of a good 
book can be gathered only by him who, with pa- 
tient effort and humility of heart, strives to enter 
into the thoughts of the great dead, and, having 
accomplished that, is able, by still greater effort, to 
enter into their hearts and feel with them. We 
lose these treasures by our indifference to the 
higher things of life — literature, science, art, na- 
ture, compassion — and by our national belief that a 
man's life does, after all, consist in the abundance 
of the things which he possesses. 

And so we come naturally and logically, as Rus- 
kin came in his life work, to questions of national 
morality or immorality; to the eager, bitter denun- 
ciations of national callousness, and to passionate 
appeals for a new and more abundant national life. 
' My friends, I do not know why any of us should 
talk about reading. We want some sharper dis- 
cipline than that of reading; but, at all events, be 
assured, we cannot read. It is simply and sternly 



IN TR OD UC TION. xxi 

impossible for the English public, at this moment, 
to understand any thoughtful writing — so incapable 
of thought has it become in its insanity of ava- 
rice.' These sentences mark the crisis or turning- 
point in the argument of Kings' Treasuries, as 
the discovery of their truth marks the turning-point 
of Ruskin's work. The progress of this lecture 
follows in miniature the progress of Ruskin's life. 

Though inferior in interest and importance, the 
second lecture continues, in some sort, the teaching 
of the first. It, too, treats of the conduct of life; 
presenting an ideal of noble womanhood, and the 
majesty of woman's influence in the life of the 
race. It is the theme which Tennyson had already 
developed in his Princess, and in essentials the 
ideal of the two works is the same. Ruskin's argu- 
ment falls into three divisions. First, by an ap- 
peal to the wisdom of the great dead, he maintains 
the right of woman to a queenly, directing power 
in the affairs of life ; he next considers what educa- 
tion may best prepare a woman for this queenly 
function ; and lastly, he shows how, and to what 
ends, her power should be exercised. 

Written, then, in his best manner, and dealing as 
it does with the most vital part of his teaching, 
Sesame and Lilies serves admirably as an in- 
troduction to Ruskin and to his work. It is hon- 
estly and benevolently done ; in the fullest sense of 
the word, a Book. If we are tempted at times to 
resent the dogmatism and the denunciations, we 
must remember that Ruskin did not write to amuse 



xxu INTRODUCTION. 

people ; that he was deeply and terribly in earnest ; 
and that when a man not only means what he says, 
but feels it with all his soul, it is hard for him to be 
perfectly calm, or absolutely sane. 

III. 

In the Queen of the Air Ruskin says of his own 
style : ' I have always had three different ways of 
writing; one with the single view of making myself 
understood, in which case I necessarily omit a great 
deal of what comes into my head ; another, in 
.which I say what I think ought to be said, in what 
I suppose to be the best words I can find for it 
(which is in reality an afifected style — ^be it good or 
bad) ; and my third way of writing is to say all that 
comes into my head for my own pleasure, in the 
first words that come, retouching them afterwards 
into (approximate) grammar.' Sesame and Lil- 
ies — the greater part of it, at any rate — is writ- 
ten in the second of these styles, which, despite Rus- 
kin's self-charge of affectation, is his great style, 
the style which gives him his undisputed place 
among the prose-writers of the nineteenth century. 
This style is, I think, marked by three dominant 
traits : its forcibleness, its wealth of illustration and 
allusion, and its poetic color. I shall consider these 
three qualities in order. 

The forcibleness of Ruskin's style is not, like that 
of Carlyle, gained by a mere succession of sharp 
hammer blows, or by a disregard of normal sen- 



INTRODUCTION. xxill 

tence structure. It is the more refined strength of 
an Apollo, not the impetuous rage of a Norse 
Thor. Neither is it like the strength of a New- 
man, due to strict subordination of details and 
careful grouping of thought. Ruskin's style 
gains strength gradually as it proceeds, and by ac- 
cretion, as it were. The paragraph begins with a 
short simple sentence, stating its main theme. The 
succeeding sentences take up the theme, adding 
and illustrating, each a little longer and more im- 
passioned than its predecessor. Last we have a 
long, highly wrought sentence, which gathers up 
into itself the strength of all the rest, and with the 
roar and plunge of a majestic wave hurls itself 
at us.* 

Within the sentence itself a similar method of ac- 
cretion may be noticed. The sentences are rarely 
periodic, yet they do not impress us disagreeably 
by their looseness. They proceed by the addition 
of clause to clause, but every addition marks an ad- 
vance to something more important or more im- 
passioned. These clauses are very often to be 
found in groups of three, four, or even five.f At 
times, often in denunciatory passages, an adjective 
or a group of adjectives is kept till the end of the 

* Examples of this typical paragraph are §§ 41, 42, 45, of 
Kings' Treasuries. At times, as in §45, the long sentence is 
followed by a single shorter one ; at times the longest sentence 
is nearly midway, and the paragraph becomes a rise and fall of 
intensity. As an example of this latter structure, see § 37. 

f For examples see §§ 38, 42. § 45 furnishes a remarkable 
instance of the triple grouping. 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

sentence, to be hurled at us after we think the 
dread voice is past. The following sentence illus- 
trates both the grouping of clauses and this saving 
up of adjectives. * Our National wish and purpose 
are to be amused ; our National religion is the per- 
formance of church ceremonies, and preaching of 
soporific truths (or untruths), to keep the mob 
quietly at work, w^hile we amuse ourselves; and the 
necessity for this amusement is fastening on us 
as a feverous disease of parched throat and wander- 
ing eyes — senseless, dissolute, merciless.' 

No less obvious than the earnestness and strength 
of Ruskin's style is its wealth of illustration and 
allusion. The range of this illustration and allusion 
is considerable — from the Bible and the great poets 
to contemporary literature, history, and newspaper 
gossip. When we remember the place occupied by 
the Bible in Ruskin's early education, and his as- 
sertion in Prcetcrita that to his familiarity with 
it he owes the best part of his taste in literature, 
we shall not be surprised to find it occupying chief 
place in his writings. At times he quotes out- 
right, at times he merely alludes to* or borrows a 
Biblical phrase or turn of language. In other 
places — notably in the last paragraph of Queens' 
Gardens — his language becomes a mere mosaic of 
Bible verses, in which Old Testament and New 
blend into and color each other. Sometimes the 
Bible language serves as the basis of a paragraph, 
and lends itself under Ruskin's fancy to new in- 
terpretation and expansion.* 

* Sec, especially, § 45 and notes, 



INTRODUCTION. XXV 

What is the result of this constant ilkistration 
and allusion? At times it is bewildering, espe- 
cially if one does not recognize the allusion — a not 
infrequent occurrence, since Ruskin is' often 
referring to some contemporary event of pass- 
ing interest. It nearly always retards the 
progress of the thought. Not infrequently it 
seems overdone. But this retardation is not with- 
out its intended effect. Ruskin does not wish us 
to arrive at his full thought until we are ready to 
receive it and accept it. It is not his way to cut 
down forests and lay low every mountain and hill, 
that our pathway may be straight and plain. He 
prefers rather to lead us through many a bypath 
meadow and many a grassy glade, beguiling us with 
a fair flower or a pleasing prospect, till we are off 
our guard, and come quite unexpectedly to the end 
he wishes us to reach. He is like the keen-eyed 
eagle, who soars in great circles above his prey be- 
fore he is ready to swoop down upon it ; the 
watcher knows not when he will strike, but the 
eagle's eye never leaves its object. 

But, if Ruskin's prose is marked by its force and 
by its allusiveness, it is still more strongly char- 
acterized by its poetic color. Always an orna- 
mented, imaginative style, it rises at times into a 
manner so highly wrought, so vividly image-build- 
ing, that it ceases to be prose at all and becomes 
poetry, while the language assumes sympathetically 
the subtlest rhythms and most expressive harmo- 
nies. And this quality of his writings is so obvious 



XXVI IN TROD UC TION. 

that it needs but slight analysis. Turn from 
Sesame to the graceful delicacy and limpidness 
of Addison or the clear intellectuality of Arnold, 
and we feel ourselves in another atmosphere. Rus- 
kin's love of metaphor shows itself in the very titles 
of his books, and there is scarce a page without its 
simile. As an example of his power of sustained 
simile, turn to the Scythian guest of § 42. As an 
example of his highly imaginative metaphor, take 
this splendidly rhythmical sentence from § 41. 
' How often, even if we lift the marble entrance 
gate, do we but wander among those old kings in 
their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and 
stir the crowns on their foreheads ; and still they are 
silent to us, and seem but a dusty imagery ; because 
we know not the incantation of the heart that would 
wake them ; — which, if they once heard, they would 
start up to meet us in their power of long ago, nar- 
rowly to look upon us, and consider us ; and as the 
fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, saying, 
" Art thou also become weak as we ? art thou also 
become one of us ? " so would these kings, with 
their undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, say- 
ing, " Art thou also become pure and mighty of 
heart as we? art thou also become one of us? " ' 

Forcibleness, wealth of illustration, poetic im- 
agery — these three ; one might mention other lesser 
characteristics, but these are what mark Ruskin's 
style in Sesame and Lilies. 

i It is one of Ruskin's basic theories that in the 
building we can read the architect. May we not 



INTRODUCTION. xxvii 

reverse the proposition, and say that from the man 
we can tell what sort of building he would build? 
Ruskin's work always suggests to me one of those 
great French cathedrals which he loved, built in the 
ornamental style of Gothic just before it degener- 
ated into the fantastic license of the flamboyant; 
combining the grace and beauty of storied portico 
and leaf-girt column with the dignity and strength 
of a God-devoted purpose. 



LIST OF RUSKIN'S MORE IMPORTANT 
WORKS. 

1 843- 1 860. Modern Painters. 

1849. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

185 1. The King of the Golden River. 

1 85 1 . Pre-Raphaelitism. 

1851-1853. The Stones of Venice. 

1853- 1 860. Giotto and His Work in Padua. 

1854. Lectures on Architecture and Painting. 

1857. The Political Economy of Art. 

1859. The Tzvo Paths. 

i860. Unto This Last. 

1865. Sesame and Lilies. 

1866. The Ethics of the Dust. 
1866. The Grown of Wild Olive. 
1869. The Queen of the Air. 

1 871-1884. Fors Glavigera. 
1 885- 1 889. PrcBterita. 



SESAME AND LILIES. 



LECTURE I.— SESAME. 

'' You shall each have a cake of sesame,— and ten pound." 

LuciAN : T/ie Fisherman. 

I. My first duty this evening is to ask your par- 
don for the ambiguity of title under which the sub- 
ject of lecture has been announced: for indeed I 
am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, 
5 nor of treasuries, understood to contain wealth ; 
but of quite another order of royalty, and another 
material of riches, than those usually acknowl- 
edged. I had even intended to ask your atten- 
tion for a little while on trust, and (as some- 

lo times one contrives, in taking a friend to see a 
favourite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted 
most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I 
might, until we unexpectedly reached the best 
point of view by winding paths. But — and as also 

15 I have heard it said, by men practised in public 
address, that hearers are never so much fatigued 
as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who gives 
them no clue to his purpose, — I will take the slight 
mask off at once, and tell you plainly that I want 

20 to speak to you about the treasures hidden in 



2 SESAME AND LILIES. 

books; and about the way we find them, and the 
way we lose them. A grave subject, you will say; 
and a wide one! Yes; so wide that I shall make 
no effort to touch the compass of it. I will try 
only to bring before you a few simple thoughts 5 
about reading, which press themselves upon me 
every day more deeply, as I watch the course of 
the public mind with respect to our daily enlarging 
means of education; and the answeringly wider 
spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of lit- 10 
erature. 

2. It happens that I have practically some con- 
nection with schools for different classes of youth; 
and I receive many letters from parents respect- 
ing the education of their children. In the mass 15 
of these letters I am always struck by the prece- 
dence which the idea of a " position in life " takes 
above all other thoughts in the parents' — more es- 
pecially in the mothers' — minds. " The education 
befitting such and such a station in life " — this is the 20 
phrase, this the object, always. They never seek, 
as far as I can make out, an education good in 
itself; even the conception of abstract rightness in 
training rarely seems reached by the writers. But, 
an education '* which shall keep a good coat on my 25 
son's back; — which shall enable him to ring with 
confidence the visitors' bell at double-belled doors; 
which shall result ultimately in the establishment 
of a double-belled door to his own house; — in a 
word, which shall lead to advancement in life; — 30 
this we pray for on bent knees — and this is all we 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 3 

pray for." It never seems to occur to the parents 
that there may be an education which, in itself, is 
advancement in Life; — that any other than that 
may perhaps be advancement in Death; and that 
5 this essential education might be more easily got, or 
given, than they fancy, if they set about it in the 
right way; while it is for no price, and by no favour, 
to be got, if they set about it in the wrong. 

3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and 

10 effective in the mind of this busiest of countries, I 
suppose the first — at least that which is confessed 
with the greatest frankness, and put forward as the 
fittest stimulus to youthful exertion — is this of 
" Advancement in life." May I ask you to con- 

15 sider with me, what this idea practically includes, 
and what it should include? 

Practically, then, at present, " advancement in 
life" means, becoming conspicuous in life; obtain- 
ing a position which shall be acknowledged by 

20 others to be respectable or honourable. We do not 
understand by this advancement, in general, the 
mere making of money, but the being known to 
have made it; not the accomplishment of any great 
aim, but the being seen to have accomplished it. 

25 In a word, we mean the gratification of our thirst 
for applause. That thirst, if the last infirmity of 
noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones; 
and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive influence 
of average humanity : the greatest efforts of the race 

30 have always been traceable to the love of praise, as 
its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure. 



4 SESAME AND LILIES. 

4. I am not about to attack or defend this im- 
pulse. I want you only to feel how it lies at the root 
of effort; especially of all modern effort. It is the 
gratification of vanity which is, with us, the stim- 
ulus of toil and balm of repose; so closely does it 5 
touch the very springs of life that the wounding of 
our vanity is always spoken of (and truly) as in its 
measure mortal; we call it " mortification," using 
the same expression which we should apply to a 
gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And al- 10 
though a few of us may be physicians enough to 
recognise the various effect of this passion upon 
health and energy, I believe most honest men 
know, and would at once acknowledge, its leading 
power with them as a motive. The seaman does 15 
not commonly desire to be made captain only be- 
cause he knows he can manage the ship better than 
any other sailor on board. He wants to be made 
captain that he may be called captain. The clergy- 
man does not usually want to be made a bishop 20 
only because he believes that no other hand can, 
as firmly as his, direct the diocese through its dif- 
ficulties. He wants to be made bishop primarily 
that he may be called '* My Lord." And a prince 
does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject to 25 
gain, a kingdom, because he believes that no one 
else can as well serve the State, upon its throne; 
but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as 

" Your Majesty," by as many lips as may be 
brought to such utterance. ' . 30 

5. This, then, being the main idea of " advance- 



OP KINGS' TREASURIES. 5 

ment in life," the force of it applies, for all of us, 
according to our station, particularly to that sec- 
ondary result of such advancement which we call 
" getting into good society." We want to get into 
5 good society not that we may have it, but that we 
may be seen in it; and our notion of its goodness 
depends primarily on its conspicuousness. 

Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to 
put what I fear you may think an impertinent ques- 

lotion? I never can go on with an address unless I 
feel, or know, that my audience are either with me 
or against me: I do not much care which, in begin- 
ning; but I must know where they are; and I would 
fain find out, at this instant, whether you think I 

15 am putting the motives of popular action too low. 
I am resolved, to-night, to state them low enough 
to be admitted as probable; for whenever, in my 
writings on Political Economy, I assume that a 
little honesty, or generosity, — or what used to be 

20 called " virtue " — may be calculated upon as a hu- 
man motive of action, people always answer me, 
saying, " You must not calculate on that : that is 
not in human nature: you must not assume any- 
thing to be common to men but acquisitiveness 

25 and jealousy; no other feeling ever has influence on 
them, except accidentally, and in matters out of the 
way of business." I begin, accordingly, to-night 
low in the scale of motives; but I must know if you 
think me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask 

30 those who admit the love of praise to be usually 
the strongest motive in men's minds in seeking ad- 



6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

vancement, and the honest desire of doing any kind 
of duty to be an entirely secondary one, to hold up 
their hands. {About a dozen hands held up — the 
audience, partly, not being sure the lecturer is seri- 
ous, and, partly, shy of expressing opinion.) I am 5 
quite serious — I really do want to know what you 
think; however, I can judge by putting the reverse 
question. Will those who think that duty is gen- 
erally the first, and love of praise the second, mo- 
tive, hold up their hands? (One hand reported to 10 
have been held up, behind the lecturer.) Very 
good: I see you are with me, and that you think 
I have not begun too near the ground. Now, with- 
out teasing you by putting farther question, I ven- 
ture to assume that you will admit duty as at least a ^5 
secondary or tertiary motive. You think that the 
desire of doing something useful, or obtaining some 
real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, 
though a secondary one, in most men's desire of 
advancement. You will grant that moderately hon- 20 
est men desire place and ofifice, at least in some 
measure, for the sake of beneficent power; and 
would wish to associate rather with sensible and 
well-informed persons than with fools and ignorant 
persons, whether they are seen in the company of 25 
the sensible ones or not. And finally, without be- 
ing troubled by repetition of any common truisms 
about the preciousness of friends, and the influence 
of companions, you will admit, doubtless, that ac- 
cording to the sincerity of our desire that our 30 
friends may be true, and our companions wise,— 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 7 

and in proportion to the earnestness and discretion 
with which we choose both, will be the general 
chances of our happiness and usefulness. 

6. But granting that we had both the will and 
5 the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us 
have the power! or, at least, how limited, for most, 
is the sphere of choice! Nearly all our associations 
are determined by chance, or necessity; and re- 
stricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know 

lo whom we would ; and those whom we know, we 
cannot have at our side when we most need them. 
All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to 
those beneath, only momentarily and partially 
open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse 

15 of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; or 
put a question to a man of science, and be answered 
(rood-humouredlv. We mav intrude ten minutes' 
talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with 
words worse than silence, being deceptive; or 

2o snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of 
throwing a bouquet in the path of a Princess, or 
arresting the kind glance of a Queen. And yet 
these momentary chances we covet; and spend our 
years, and passions and powers in pursuit of little 

25 more than these; v/hile, meantime, there is a so- 
ciety continually open to us, of people who will talk 
to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or oc- 
cupation; — talk to us in the best words they can 
choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And 

30 this society, because it is so numerous and so gen- 
tle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long, 



8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

— kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to 
grant audience, but to gain it! — in those plainly 
furnished and narrow anterooms, our bookcase 
shelves, — we make no account of that company, — 
perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all 5 
day long! 

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within 
yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard 
this company of the noble, who are praying us to 
listen to them; and the passion with which we pur- 10 
sue the company, probably of the ignoble, who 
despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are 
grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of the 
living men, and it is themselves, and not their say- 
ings, with which we desire to become familiar. But ^5 
it is not so. Suppose you never were to see their 
faces: — suppose you could be put behind a screen 
in the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's chamber, 
would you not be glad to listen to their words, 
though you were forbidden to advance beyond the 20 
screen? And when the screen is only a little less, 
folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden 
behind the cover of the two boards that bind a 
book, and listen all day long, not to the casual talk, 
but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of 25 
the wisest of men; — this station of audience, and 
honourable privy council, you despise! 

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the 
living people talk of things that are passing, and 
are of immediate interest to you, that you desire to 30 
hear them. Nay; that cannot be so, for the living 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 9 

people will themselves tell you about passing mat- 
ters, much better in their writings than in their 
careless talk. But I admit that this motive does 
influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and 
5 ephemeral writings to slow and enduring writings 
— books, properly so called. For all books are 
divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, 
and the books of all time. Mark this distinction — 
it is not one of quality only. It is not merely the 

lo bad book that does not last, and the good one that 
does. It is a distinction of species. There are 
good books for the hour, and good ones for all 
time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all 
time. I must define the two kinds before I go 

15 farther. 

9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not 
speak of the bad ones — is simply the useful or pleas- 
ant talk of some person whom you cannot other- 
wise converse with, printed for you. Very useful 

20 often, telling you what you need to know; very 
pleasant often, as a sensible friend's present talk 
would be. These bright accounts of travels; good- 
humoured and witty discussions of question; lively 
or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm 

25 fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in the 
events of passing history; — all these books of the 
hour, multiplying among us as education becomes 
more general, are a peculiar possession of the pres- 
ent age: we ought to be entirely thankful for them, 

30 and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no 
good use of them. But we make the worst possible 



lo SESAME AND LILIES. 

use if we allow them to usurp the place of true 
books: for, strictly speaking, they are not books at 
all-, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. 
Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, 
to-day : whether worth keeping or not, is to be con- 5 
sidered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at 
breakfast-time, but assuredly it is not reading for 
all day. So, though bound up in a volume, the 
long letter which gives you so pleasant an account 
of the inns, and roads, and weather last year at such lo 
a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or 
gives you the real circumstances of such and such 
events, however valuable for occasional reference, 
may not be, in the real sense of the word, a " book " 
at all, nor in the real sense, to be '' read." A book i5 
is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing; 
and written, not with a view of mere communica- 
tion, but of permanence. The book of talk is 
printed only because its author cannot speak to 
thousands of people at once; if he could, he would 20 
— the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. 
You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you 
could, you would; you write instead: that is mere 
conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to 
multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, 25 
but to perpetuate it. The author has something to 
say which he perceives to be true and useful, or 
helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has 
yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can 
say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodi- 30 
ouslv if he mav; clearlv, at all events. In the sum 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. II 

of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group 
of things, manifest to him; — this, the piece of true 
knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine 
and earth has permitted him to seize. He would 
5 fain set it down for ever; engrave it on rock, if he 
could; saying, " This is the best of me; for the rest, 
I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like 
another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but 
this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is 
lo worth your memory." That is his "writing"; it 
is, in his small human way, and with whatever de- 
gree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, 
or scripture. That is a " Book." 

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so 
15 written? 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in 
honesty, or at all in kindness? or do you think there 
is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? 
None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. 

20 Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly 
and benevolently done, that bit is his book, or his 
piece of art.'^ It is mixed always with evil frag- 
ments — ill-done, redundant, affected work. But if 
you read rightly, you will easily discover the true 

25 bits, and those arc the book. 

11. Now, books of this kind have been written in 
all ages by their greatest men, — by great readers, 
great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all 
at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard 

30 * Note this sentence carefully, and compare the ' Queen 

of the Air,' ^ 106, 



12 SESAME AND LILIES. 

as much before; — yet, have you measured and 
mapped out this short Hfe and its possibihties? Do 
you know, if you read this, that you cannot read 
that — that what you lose to-day you cannot gain 
to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your 5 
housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk 
with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it 
is with any worthy consciousness of your own 
claims to respect, that you jostle with the hungry 
and common crowd for entree here, and audience 10 
there, when all the while this eternal court is open 
to you, with its society, wide as the world, multi- 
tudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, 
of every place and time? Into that you may enter 
always; in that you may take fellowship and rank ^ 5 
according to your wish; from that, once entered 
into it, you can never be an outcast but by your own 
fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, 
your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly 
tested, and the motives with which you strive to 20 
take high place in the society of the living, meas- 
ured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in 
them, by the place you desire to take in this com- 
pany of the Dead. 

12. " The place you desire," and the place you 25 
fit yourself for, I must also say; because, observe, 
this court of the past differs from all living aristoc- 
racy in this : — it is open to labour and to merit, but 
to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name 
overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those 30 
Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 13 

person ever enters there. At the portieres of that 
silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief 
question: "Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do 
you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make 
5 yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for 
the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand 
it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? — no. 
If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. 
The living lord may assume courtesy, the living 

10 philosopher explain his thought to you with con- 
siderate pain; but here we neither feign nor inter- 
pret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts 
if you would be gladdened by them, and share our 
feelings if you would recognise our presence." 

15 13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I 
admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love 
these people, if you are to be among them. No am- 
bition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. 
You must love them, and show your love in these 

20 two following ways. 

I. — First, by a true desire to be taught by them, 
and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into 
theirs, observe; not to find your own expressed by 
them. If the person who wrote the book is not 

25 wiser than you, you need not read it ; if he be, he 
will think differently from you in many respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good 
this is — that's exactly what I think! " But the right 
feeling is, " How strange that is! I never thought 

30 of that before, and yet I see it is true ; or if I do 
not noAv, I hope I shall, some day." But whether 



14 SESAME AND LILIES. 

thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you 
g"o to the author to get at his meaning, not to find 
yours. Judge it afterwards if you think yourself 
qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be 
sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you 5 
will not get at his meaning all at once; — nay, that 
at his whole meaning you will not for a long time 
arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what 
he means, and in strong words too; but he cannot 
say it all; and what is more strange, zmll not, but in 10 
a hidden way and in parable, in order that he may 
be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason 
of this, nor analyse that cruel reticence in the 
breasts of wise men which makes them always 
hide their deeper thought. They do not give is 
it you by way of help, but of reward; and will make 
themselves sure that you deserve it before they al- 
low you to reach it. But it is the same with the 
physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to 
you and me, no reason why the electric forces of the 20 
earth should not carry whatever there is of gold 
within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings 
and people might know that all the gold they could 
get was there; and without any trouble of digging, 
or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, 25 
and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does 
not manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the 
earth, nobody knows where; you may dig long and 
find none ; you must dig painfully to find any. 

14. And it is just the same with men's best wis- 30 
dpm. When you come to a good book, you must 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 1 5 

ask yourself, '' Am I inclined to work as an Aus- 
tralian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels 
in good order, and am I in good trim myself, my 
sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, 

5 and my temper? " And, keeping the figure a little 
longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thor- 
oughly useful one, the metal you are in search of 
being the author's mind or meaning, his words are 
as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in 

lo order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own 
care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is 
your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at 
any good author's meaning without those tools and 
that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chisel- 

15 ling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather 
one grain of the metal. 

15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you earnestly 
and authoritatively, (I knozv I am right in this,) you 
must get into the habit of looking intensely at 

20 words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syl- 
lable by syllable — nay, letter by letter. For though 
it is only by reason of the opposition of letters in 
the function of signs, to sounds in the function of 
signs, that the study of books is called " literature," 

25 and that a man versed in it is called, by the con- 
sent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man 
of books, or of words, you may yet connect with 
that accidental nomenclature this real fact, — that 
you might read all the books in the British Museum 

30 (if you could live long enough), and remain an ut- 
terly " illiterate," uneducated person; but that if you 



1 6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — ■ 
that is to say, with real accuracy, — you are for ever- 
more in some measure an educated person. The 
entire difference between education and non-educa- 
tion (as regards the merely intellectual part of it), 5 
consists in this accuracy. A well-educated gentle- 
man may not know many languages, — may not be 
able to speak any but his own, — may have read 
very few books. But whatever language he knows, 
he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, 10 
he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in 
the peerage of words; knows the words of true de- 
scent and ancient blood, at a glance, from words of 
modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry, their 
intermarriages, distant relationships, and the ex- 15 
tent to which they were admitted, and offices they 
held, among the national noblesse of words at any 
time, and in any country. But an uneducated per- 
son may know, by memory, many languages, and 
talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any, 20 
— not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever 
and sensible seaman will be able to make his way 
ashore at most ports; yet he has only to speak a 
sentence of any language to be known for an il- 
literate person ; so also the accent, or turn of ex- 25 
pression of a single sentence, will at once mark a 
scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so con- 
clusively admitted, by educated persons, that a false 
accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the par- 
liament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man 30 
a certain degree of inferior standing for ever. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. I? 

i6. And this is right; but it is a pity that the ac- 
curacy insisted on is not greater, and required to 
a serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin 
quantity should excite a smile in the House of 
5 Commons; but it is wrong that a false English 
meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the 
accent of words be watched; and closely: let their 
meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer 
will do the work. A few words, well chosen and 

10 distinguished, will do work that a thousand cannot, 
when every one is acting, equivocally, in the func- 
tion of another. Yes; and words, if they are not 
watched, will do deadly work sometimes. There 
are masked words droning and skulking about us 

15 in Europe just now, — (there never were so many, 
owing to the spread of a shallow, blotching, blun- 
dering, infectious " information," or rather de- 
formation, everywhere, and to the teaching of cate- 
chisms and phrases at schools instead of human 

20 meanings) — there are masked words abroad, I say, 
which nobody understands, but which everybody 
uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, 
or even die for, fancying they mean this or that, 
or the other, of things dear to them : for such words 

25 wear chamaeleon cloaks — " groundlion " cloaks, of 
the colour of the ground of any man's fancy: on that 
ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring 
from it. There never were creatures of prey so 
mischievous, never diplormatists so cunning, never 

30 poisoners so deadly, as these masked words ; they 
are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas: what- 



1 8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

ever fancy or favourite instinct a man most cher- 
ishes, he gives to his favourite masked word to take 
care of for him; the word at last comes to have an 
infinite power over him, — you cannot get at him 
but by its ministry. 5 

17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the 
English, there is a fatal power of equivocation put 
into men's hands, almost whether they will or no, 
in being able to use Greek or Latin words for an 
idea when they want it to be awful ; and Saxon or 10 
otherwise common words when they want it to 
be vulgar. What a singular and salutary effect, 
for instance, would be produced on the minds of 
people who are in the habit of taking the Form 
of the " Word " they live by, for the Power of which ^5 
that Word tells them, if we always either retained, 
or refused, the Greek form *' biblos," or " biblion," 
ais the right expression for " book " — instead of em- 
ploying it only in the one instance in which we wish 
to give dignity to the idea, and translating it into 20 
English everywhere else. How wholesome it 
would be for many simple persons if, in such places 
(for instance) as Acts xix. 19, we retained the 
Greek expression, instead of translating it, and they 
had to read — " Many of them also which used curi- 25 
ous arts, brought their Bibles together, and burnt 
them before all men; and they counted the price 
of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of sil- 
ver"! Or if, on the other hand, we translated 
where we retain it, and always spoke of "the 30 
Holy Book," instead of " Holy Bible," it might 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 1 9 

come into more heads than it does at present, that 
the Word of God, by which the heavens were of 
old, and by which they are now kept in store, "^ can- 
not be made a present of to anybody in morocco 
5 binding; nor sown on any wayside by help either 
of steam plough or steam press ; but is nevertheless 
being offered to us daily, and by us with contumely 
refused: and sown in us daily, ;^nd by us, as in- 
stantly as may be, choked. 

lo i8. So, again, consider what effect has been pro- 
duced on the English vulgar mind by the use of 
the sonorous Latin form " damno," in translating 
the Greek KaTaKpivoD, when people charitably wish 
to make it forcible ; and the substitution of the tem- 

^5 perate " condemn " for it, when they choose to keep 
it gentle; and what notable sermons have been 
preached by illiterate clergymen on — " He that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned ; " though they would 
shrink with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, 

20 '' The saving of his house, by which he damned 
the world," or John viii. lo-ii, "Woman, hath no 
man damned thee? She saith, No man, Lord. 
Jesus answered her. Neither do I damn thee: go, 
and sin no more." And divisions in the mind of 

25 Europe, which have cost seas of blood, and in the 
defence of which the noblest souls of men have been 
cast away in frantic desolation, countless as forest- 
leaves — though, in the heart of them, founded on 
deeper causes — have nevertheless been rendered 

30 practically possible, mainly, by the European 
* 2 Peter iii. 5-7. 



20 SESAME AND LILIES. 

adoption of the Greek word for a public meeting, 
'' ecclesia," to give peculiar respectability to such 
meetings, when held for religious purposes; and 
other collateral equivocations, such as the vulgar 
English one of using the word " priest " as a con- 5 
traction for " presbyter.'" 

19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, 
this is the habit you must form. Nearly every word 
in your language has been first a word of some 
other language — of Saxon, German, French, Latin, 10 
or Greek; (not to speak of eastern and primitive 
dialects). And many words have been all these; — 
that is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, 
French or German next, and English last: under- 
going a certain change of sense and use on the lips ^5 
of each nation; but retaining a deep vital meaning, 
which all good scholars feel in employing them, 
even at this day. If you do not know the Greek 
alphabet, learn it; young or old — girl or boy — who- 
ever you may be, if you think of reading seriously 20 
(which, of course, implies that you have some 
leisure at command), learn your Greek alphabet; 
then get good dictionaries of all these languages, 
and whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt 
it down patiently. Read Max Miiller's lectures 25 
thoroughly, to begin with; and, after that, never 
let a word escape you that looks suspicious. It is 
severe work; bu^ you will find it,. even at first, inter- 
esting, and at last, endlessly amusing. And the 
general gain to your character, in power and pre- 30 
cision, will be quite incalculable. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 21 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to 
know, Greek, or Latin, or French. It takes a whole 
life to learn any language perfectly. But you can 
easily ascertain the meanings through wliich the 
5 English word has passed; and those which in a 
good writer's work it must still bear. 

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, 
with your permission, read a few lines of a true 
book with you, carefully; and see what will come 
lo out of them. I will take a book perfectly known 
to you all. No English words are more familiar 
to us, yet few perhaps have been read with less sin- 
cerity. I will take these few following lines of 
Lycidas : 

15 *' Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake. 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake. 

20 ' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the foldl 
Of other care they little reckoning make^ 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 

25 And shove away the worthy bidden guest; 

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to "hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else, the least 
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ^ 
What recks it them? What need they? They are spedj 

30 And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; 



2 2 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.'" 

Let US think over this passage, and examine its 
words. 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning 5 
to St. Peter, not only his full episcopal function, 
but the very types of it which Protestants usually 
refuse most passionately? His '* mitred " locks! 
Milton was no Bishop-lover; how comes St. Peter 
to be '* mitred "? '' Two massy keys he bore." Is 10 
this, then, the power of the keys claimed by the 
Bishops of Rome, and is it acknowledged here by 
Milton only in a poetical licence, for the sake of its 
picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the 
golden keys to help his efifect? 15 

Do not think it. Great men do not play stage 
tricks with the doctrines of life and death : only little 
men do that. Milton means what he says; and 
means it with his might too — is going to put the 
whole strength of his spirit presently into the say- 20 
ing of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, 
he zvas a lover of true ones; and the Lake-pilot is 
here, in his thoughts, the type and head of true 
episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, " I 
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 25 
Heaven " quite honestly. Puritan though he be, he 
would not blot it out of the book because there have 
been bad bishops ; nay, in order to understand him, 
we must understand that verse first; it will not do 
to eye it askance, or whisper it under our breath, as 30 
if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is a 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 2$ 

solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in 
mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better 
able to reason on it if we go on a little farther, and 
come back to it. For clearly this marked insistence 
5 on the power of the true episcopate is to make us 
feel more weightily what is to be charged against 
the false claimants of episcopate; or generally, 
against false claimants of power and rank in the 
body of the clergy: they who, *' for their bellies' 

lo sake, creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." 

21. Never think Milton uses those three words 

to fill up his verse, as a loose writer would. He 

needs all the three; — specially those three, and no 

more than those — " creep," and '' intrude," and 

15 " climb "; no other words would or could serve the 
turn, and no more could be added. For they ex- 
haustively comprehend the three classes, corre- 
spondent to the three characters, of men who dis- 
honestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those 

20 who ''creep" into the fold; who do not care for 
ofifice, nor name, but for secret influence, and do 
all things occultly and cunningly, consenting to any 
servility of office or conduct, so only that they may 
intimately discern, and unawares direct, the minds 

25 of men. Then those who '' intrude " (thrust, that 
is) themselves into the fold, who by natural inso- 
lence of heart, and stout eloquence of tongue, and 
fearlessly perseverant self-assertion, obtain hearing 
and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, 

30 those who " climb," who, by labour and learning, 
both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the 



24 SESAME AND LILIES. 

cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities 
and authorities, and become '' lords over the her- 
itage," thoug-h not *' ensamples to the flock." 
^^. Now go on: — 

" Of other care they little reckoning make, 5 

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
Blind jnouths " 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression: 
a broken metaphor, one might think, careless and 
unscholarly. 10 

Not so; its very audacity and pithiness are in- 
tended to make us look close at the phrase and re- 
member it. Those two monosyllables express the 
precisely accurate contraries of right character, in 
the two great offices of the Church — those of bishop 15 
and pastor. 

A " Bishop " means '' a person who sees." 

A " Pastor " means '' a person who feeds." 

The most unbishoply character a man can have 
is therefore to be Blind. 20 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to 
want to be fed, — to be a Mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have 
** blind mouths." We may advisably follow out this 
idea a little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have 25 
arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. 
They want authority, not outlook. Whereas their 
real office is not to rule; though it may be vigor- 
ously to exhort and rebuke; it is the king's office to 
rule; the bishop's office is to oversee the flock; to 30 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 25 

number it, sheep by sheep; to be ready always to 
give full account of it. Now, it is clear he cannot 
give account of the souls, if he has not so much as 
numbered the bodies of his flock. The first thing, 

5 therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put 
himself in a position in which, at any moment, he 
can obtain the history, from childhood, of every 
living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. 
Down in that back street. Bill, and Nancy, knock- 

10 ing each other's teeth out! — Does the bishop know 
all about it? Has he his eye upon them? Has he 
had his eye upon them? Can he circumstantially 
explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beating 
Nancy about the head? If he cannot he is no 

15 bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury 
steeple; he is no bishop, — he has sought to be at 
the helm instead of the masthead; he has no sight 
of things. " Nay," you say, " it is not his duty to 
look after Bill in the back street." What! the fat 

20 sheep that have full fleeces — you think it is only 
those he should look after, while (go back to your 
Milton) " the hungry sheep look up, and are not 
fed, besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw " 
(bishops knowing nothing about it) '' daily devours 

25 apace, and nothing said "? 

" But that's not our idea of a bishop." * Per- 
haps not; but it was St. Paul's; and it was Milton's. 
They may be right, or we may be; but we must 
not think we are reading either one or the other 

30 by putting our meaning into their words. 

* Compare the 13th Letter in ' Time and Tide.' 



26 SESAME AND LILIES. 

2^. I go on. 

" But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " if the 
poor are not looked after in their bodies, they are 
in their souls; they have spiritual food." 5 

And Milton says, " They have no such thing as 
spiritual food; they are only swollen with wind." 
At first you may think that is a coarse type, and an 
obscure one. But again, it is a quite literally ac- 
curate one. Take up your Latin and Greek die- 10 
tionaries, and find out the meaning of " Spirit." It 
is only a contraction of the Latin word " breath," 
and an indistinct translation of the Greek word for 
" wind." The same word is used in writing, " The 
wind bloweth where it listeth; " and in writing, " So 15 
is every one that is born of the Spirit; " born of the 
breath, that is; for it means the breath of God, in 
soul and body. We have the true sense of it in 
our words *' inspiration " and '' expire." Now, 
there are two kinds of breath with which the flock 20 
may be filled; God's breath and man's. The breath 
of God is health, and life, and peace to them, as 
the air of heaven is to the flocks on the hills; but 
man's breath — the word which he calls spiritual — 
is disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the 25 
fen. They rot inwardly with it; they are puffed up 
by it, as a dead body by the vapours of its own de- 
composition. This is literally true of all false 
religious teaching; the first, and last, and fatal- 
est sign of it is that " puffing up." Your con- 30 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 27 

verted children, who teach their parents; your 
converted convicts, who teach honest men; 
your converted dunces, who, having hved in 
cretinous stupefaction half their lives, suddenly 
5 awaking to the fact of there being a God, 
fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people and 
messengers; your sectarians of every species, small 
and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high church or 
low, in so far as they think themselves exclusively 

loin the right and others wrong; and pre-eminently, 
in every sect, those who hold that men can be saved 
by thinking rightly instead of doing rightly, by 
word instead of act, and wish instead of work; — 
these are the true fog children — clouds, these, with- 

15 out water; bodies, these, of putrescent vapour and 

skin, without blood or flesh: blown bag-pipes for 

the fiends to pipe with — corrupt, and corrupting, — 

" Swoln with wind, and the r^nk mist they draw." 

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting 

20 the power of the keys, for now we can understand 
them. Note the difference between Milton and 
Dante in their interpretation of this power: for 
once, the latter is weaker in thought; he supposes 
both the keys to be of the gate of heaven; one is of 

25 gold, the other of silver: they are given by St. 
Peter to the sentinel angel; and it is not easy to 
determine the meaning either of the substances of 
the three steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But 
Milton makes one, of gold, the key of heaven; the 

30 other, of iron, the key of the prison in which the 
wicked teachers are to be bound who " have taken 



28 SESAME AND LILIES. 

away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in 
themselves." 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor 
are to see, and feed; and of all who do so it is said, 
** He that watereth, shall be watered also himself." 5 
But the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, 
shall be withered himself; and he that seeth not, 
shall himself be shut out of sight — shut into the per- 
petual prison-house. And that prison opens here, 
as well as hereafter ; he who is to be bound in lo 
heaven must first be bound on earth. That com- 
mand to the strong angels, of which the rock- 
apostle is the image, " Take him, and bind him 
hand and foot, and cast him out," issues, in its 
measure, against the teacher, for every help with- ^5 
held, and for every truth refused, and for every 
falsehood enforced; so that he is more strictly fet- 
tered the more he fetters, and farther outcast, as he 
more and more misleads, till at last the bars of the 
iron cage close upon him, and as '' the golden opes, 20 
the iron shuts amain." 

25. We have got something out of the lines, I 
think, and much more is yet to be found in them; 
but we have done enough by way of example of 
the kind of word-by-word examination of your au- 25 
thor which is rightly called " reading " ; watching 
every accent and expression, and putting ourselves 
always in the author's place, annihilating our own 
personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to 
be able assuredly to say, " Thus Milton thought," 30 
not " Thus / thought, in mis-reading Milton." 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 29 

And by this process you will gradually come to at- 
tach less weight to your own " Thus I thought " 
at other times. You will begin to perceive that 
what you thought was a matter of no serious im- 

Sportance; — that your thoughts on any subject are 
not perhaps the clearest and wisest that could be 
arrived at thereupon: — in fact, that unless you are 
a very singular person, you cannot be said to have 
any " thoughts " at all; that you have no materials 

10 for them, in any serious matters; "^^ — no right to 
" think," but only to try to learn more of the facts. 
Nay, most probably all your life (unless, as I said, 
you are a singular person) you will have no legiti- 
mate right to an " opinion " on any business, ex- 

15 cept that instantly under your hand. What must of 
necessity be done, you can always find out, beyond 
question, how to do. Have you a house to keep in 
order, a commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch 
to cleanse? There need be no two opinions about 

20 the proceedings ; it is at your peril if you have not 
much more than an " opinion " on the way to man- 
age such matters. And also, outside of your own 
business, there are one or two subjects on which 
you are bound to have but one opinion. That 

25 roguery and lying are objectionable, and are in- 
stantly to be fiogged out of the way whenever dis- 
covered; — that covetousness and love of quarrelling 
are dangerous dispositions even in children, and 

* Modern " education" for the most part signifies giving 
30 people the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable 
subject of importance to them. 



30 SESAME AND LILIES. 

deadly dispositions in men and nations ; — that in the 
end, the God of heaven and earth loves active, mod- 
est, and kind people, and hates idle, proud, greedy, 
and cruel ones; — on these general facts you are 
bound to have but one, and that a very strong, 5 
opinion. For the rest, respecting religions, govern- 
ments, sciences, arts, you will find that, on the 
whole, you can know nothing, — judge nothing; 
that the best you can do, even though you may 
be a well-educated person, is to be silent, and strive lo 
to be wiser every day, and to understand a little 
more of the thoughts of others, which so soon as 
you try to do honestly, you will discover that the 
thoughts even of the wisest are very little more than 
pertinent questions. To put the difficulty into a i5 
clear shape, and exhibit to you the grounds for 
i/idecision, that is all they can generally do for you! 
— and well for them and for us, if indeed they are 
able " to mix the music with our thoughts, and 
sadden us with heavenly doubts." This writer, from 20 
whom I have been reading to you, is not among 
the first or wisest: he sees shrewdly as far as he 
sees, and therefore it is easy to find out his full 
meaning; but with the greater men, you cannot 
fathom their meaning; they do not even wholly 25 
measure it themselves, — it is so wide. Suppose I 
had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shake- 
speare's opinion instead of Milton's, on this matter 
of Church authority? — or of Dante's? Have any of 
you, at this instant, the least idea what either 30 
thought about -it? Have you ever balanced the 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 3^ 

scene with the bishops in Richard III. against the 
character of Cranmer? the description of St. 
Francis and St. Dominic against that of him who 
made Virgil wonder to gaze upon him,—" disteso, 

5 tanto vilmente, nell' eterno esilio " ; or of him whom 
Dante stood beside, " come '1 frate che confessa lo 
perfido assassin"?* Shakespeare and Ahghieri 
knew men better than most of us, I presume! They 
were both in the midst of the main struggle be- 

lo tween the temporal and spiritual powers. They had 
an opinion, we may guess. But where is it? Bring 
it into court! Put Shakespeare's or Dante's creed 
into articles, and send it up for trial by the Ec- 
clesiastical Courts! 

15 26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for 
many and many a day, to come at the real purposes 
and teaching of these great men; but a very little 
honest study of them will enable you to perceive 
that what you took for your own " judgment " was 

20 mere chance prejudice, and drifted, helpless, en- 
tangled weed of castaway thought; nay, you will 
see that most men's minds are indeed little better 
than rough heath wilderness, neglected and stub- 
born, partly barren, partly overgrown with pestilent 

25 brakes, and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil 
surmise; that the first thing you have to do for 
them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set 
fire to this; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash- 
heaps, and then plough and sow. All the true lit- 

3oerary work before you, for life, must begin with 
* Inf. xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50. 



32 SESAME AND LILIES. 

obedience to that order, " Break np your fallow 
ground, and .wzc ni)t among thorns.^' 

2y. II.* Having then faithfully listened to the 
great teachers, that you may enter into their 
Thoughts, you have yet this higher advance to 5 
make; — you have to enter into their Hearts. As 
you go to them first for clear sight, so you must 
stay with them, that you may share at last their 
just and mighty Passion. Passion, or " sensation." 
I am not afraid of the word; still less of the thing. lo 
You have heard many outcries against sensation 
lately; but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation 
we want, but more. The ennobling difference be- 
tween one man and another, — between one ani- 
mal and another, — is precisely in this, that one 15 
feels more than another. If we were sponges, 
perhaps sensation might not be easily got for 
us; if we were earth-worms, liable at every in- 
stant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too 
much sensation might not be good for us. But 20 
being human creatures, it is good for us; nay, we 
are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and 
our honour is precisely in proportion to our pas- 
sion. 

28. You know I said of that great and pure so- 25 
ciety of the Dead, that it would allow " no vain or 
vulgar person to enter there." What do you think 
I meant by a *' vulgar " person? What do you 
yourselves mean by " vulgarity "? You will find it 
a fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the es- 30 
♦Compare ^ 13 above. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 33 

sence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. 
Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an un- 
trained and undeveloped bluntness of body and 
mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a dread- 
5 ful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capa- 
ble cf every sort of bestial habit and crime, without 
fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without 
pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, 
in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, 

lothat men become vulgar; they are for ever vulgar, 
precisely in proportion as they are incapable of 
sympathy — of quick understanding, — of all that, in 
deep insistence on the common, but most accurate 
term, may be called the " tact " or " touch-faculty," 

15 of body and soul: that tact which the Mimosa has 
jn trees, which the pure woman has above all crea- 
tures; — fineness and fulness of sensation, beyond 
reason; — the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. 
Reason can but determine what is true: — it is the 

20 God-given passion of humanity which alone can 
recognize what God has made good. 

29. We come then to that great concourse of the 
Dead, not merely to know from them what is true, 
but chiefly to feel with them what is just. Now, 

25 to feel with them, we must be like them; and none 
of us can become that without pains. As the true 
knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge, — 
not the first thought that comes, — so the true pas- 
sion is disciplined and tested passion, — not the first 

30 passion that comes. The first that come are the 
vain, the false, the treacherous; if you yield to them, 



34 SESAME AND LILIES. 

they will lead you wildly and far, in vain pursuit, 
in hollow enthusiasm, till you have no true pur- 
pose and no true passion left. Not that any feel- 
ing possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but only 
wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its 5 
force and justice; it is wrong when it is weak, and 
felt for paltry cause. There is a mean wonder, as of 
a child who sees a juggler tossing golden balls, and 
this is base, if you will. But do you think that the 
wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, with which lo 
every human soul is called to watch the golden balls 
of heaven tossed through the night by the Hand 
that made them? There is a mean curiosity, as of 
a child opening a forbidden door, or a servant pry- 
ing into her master's business ; — and a noble curi- 15 
osity, questioning, in the front of danger, the source 
of the great river beyond the sand, — the place of 
the great continent beyond the sea ; — ^a nobler curi- 
osity still, which questions of the source of the 
River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of 20 
Heaven — things which " the angels desire to look 
into." So the anxiety is ignoble, with which you 
linger over the course and catastrophe of an idle 
tale; but do you think the anxiety is less, or greater, 
with which you watch, or ought to watch, the deal- 25 
ings of fate and destiny with the life of an agonized 
nation? Alas! it is the narrowness, selfishness, 
minuteness, of your sensation that you have to de- 
plore in England at this day; — sensation which 
spends itself in bouquets and speeches ; in revellings 30 
and junketings; in sham fights and gay puppet 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 35 

shows, while you can look on and see noble nations 
murdered, man by man, without an effort or a tear. 
30. I said '' minuteness " and *' selfishness " of 
sensation, but it would have been enough to have 
5 said '' injustice " or '' unrighteousness " of sensa- 
tion. For as in nothing is a gentleman better to 
be discerned from a vulgar person, so in nothing is 
a gentle nation (such nations have been) better to 
be discerned from a mob, than in this, — that their 

10 feelings are constant and just, results of due con- 
templation, and of equal thought. You can talk a 
mob into anything; its feelings may be — usually are 
— on the whole, generous and right; but it has no 
foundation for them, no hold of them; you may 

15 tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks 
by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion 
like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will 
not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on; — 
nothing so great but it will forget in an hour, when 

20 the fit is past. But a gentleman's, or a gentle na- 
tion's, passions are just, measured, and continuous. 
A great nation, for instance, does not spend its en- 
tire national wits for a couple of months in weigh- 
ing evidence of a single ruffian's having done a 

25 single murder; and for a couple of years see its own 
children murder each other by their thousands or 
tens of thousands a day, considering only what the 
effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and car- 
ing nowise to determine which side of battle is in 

30 the wrong. Neither does a great nation send its 
poor little boys to jail for stealing six walnuts; and 



36 SESAME AND LILIES. 

allow its bankrupts to steal their hundreds of thou- 
sands with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor 
men's savings, to close their doors " under circum- 
stances over which they have no control/' with a 
"by your leave"; and large landed estates to be 5 
bought by men who have made their money by 
going with armed steamers up and down the China 
Seas, selling opium at the cannon's mouth, and 
altering, for the benefit of the foreign nation, the 
common highwayman's demand of '' your money lo 
or your life," into that of '' your money and your 
life." Neither does a great nation allow the lives 
of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by 
fog fever, and rotted out of them by dung-hill 
plague, for the sake of sixpence a life extra peris 
week to its landlords ; * and then debate, with driv- 
elling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether it 
ought not piously to save, and nursingly cherish, 
the lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation 
having made up its mind that hanging is quite the 20 
wholesomest process for its homicides in general, 
can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees 
of guilt in homicides; and does not yelp like a pack 
of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood-track of 
an unhappy crazed boy, or grey-haired clodpate 25 
Othello, ** perplexed i' the extreme," at the very 
moment that it is sending a Minister of the Crown 
to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting 

* See note at end of lecture. I have put it in large type, 
because the course of matters since it was written has 30 
made it perhaps better worth attention. 



OF KIMGS' TREASURIES 37 

young girls in their fathers' sight, and killing noble 
youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher 
kills lambs in spring. And, lastly, a great nation 
does not mock Heaven and its Powers, by pretend- 
5 ing belief in a revelation which asserts the love of 
money to be the root of all evil, and declaring, at 
the same time, that it is actuated, and intends to be 
actuated, in all chief national deeds and measures, 
by no other love. 

lo 31. My friends, I do not know why any of us 
should talk about reading. We want some sharper 
discipline than that of reading; but, at all events, 
be assured, we cannot read. No reading is possi- 
ble for a people with its mind in this state. No sen- 

15 tence of any great writer is intelligible to them. 
It is simply and sternly impossible for the English 
public, at this moment, to understand any thought- 
ful writing, — so incapable of thought has it become 
in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our disease is, 

20 as yet, little worse than this incapacity of thought; 
it is not corruption of the inner nature; we ring true 
still, when anything strikes home to us; and though 
the idea that everything should *' pay " has infected 
our every purpose so deeply, that even when we 

25 would play the good Samaritan, we never take out 
our twopence and give them to the host, without 
saying, " When I come again, thou shalt give me 
fourpence," there is a capacity of noble passion left 
in our hearts' core. We show it in our work — in 

30 our war, — even in those unjust domestic affections 
which make us furious at a small private wrong, 



38 SESAME AND LILIES. 

while we are polite to a boundless public one: we 
are still industrious to the last hour of the day, 
though we add the gambler's fury to the labourer's 
patience; we are still brave to the death, though in- 
capable of discerning true cause for battle; and are 5 
still true in affection to our own flesh, to the death, 
as the sea-monsters are, and the rock-eagles. And 
there is hope for a nation while this can be still 
said of it. As long as it holds its life in its hand, 
ready to give it for its honour (though a foolish lo 
honour), for its love (though a selfish love), and for 
its business (though a base business), there is hope 
for it. But hope only; for this instinctive, reckless 
virtue cannot last. No nation can last, which has 
made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. i5 
It must discipline its passions, and direct them, or 
they will discipline it, one day, with scorpion-whips. 
Above all, a nation cannot last as a money-making 
mob: it cannot with impunity, — it cannot with ex- 
istence, — go on despising literature, despising 20 
science, despising art, despising nature, despising 
compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. 
Do you think these are harsh or wild words? Have 
patience with me but a little longer. I will prove 
their truth to you, clause by clause. 25 

32. I. I say first we have despised literature. 
What do we, as a nation, care about books? How 
much do you think we spend altogether on our 
libraries, public or private, as compared with what 
we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly 30 
on his library, you call him mad — a bibliomaniac. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 39 

But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though 
men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and 
you do not hear of people ruining themselves by 
their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do 
5 you think the contents of the book-shelves of the 
United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, 
as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? 
What position would its expenditure on literature 
take, as compared with its expenditure on luxurious 

locating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food 
for the body: now a good book contains such food 
inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and for the 
best part of us; yet how long most people would 
look at the best book before they would give the 

15 price of a large turbot for it! Though there have 
been men who have pinched their stomachs and 
bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries 
were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than 
most men's dinners are. We are few of us put to 

20 such trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a pre- 
cious thing is all the more precious to us if it has 
been won by work or economy; and if public li- 
braries were half as costly as public dinners, or 
books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even 

25 foolish men and women might sometimes suspect 
there was good in reading, as well as in munching 
and sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of lit- 
erature is making even wise people forget that if a 
book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No 

36 book is worth anything which is not worth much; 
nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re- 



40 SESAME AND LILIES. 

read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so 
that you can refer to the passages you want in it, 
as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an 
armoury, or a house-wife bring the spice she needs 
from her store. Bread of flour is good; but there 5 
is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a 
good book; and the family must be poor indeed 
which, once in their lives, cannot, for such multi- 
pliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call . 
ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish lo 
enough to thumb each other's books out of circulat- 
ing libraries! 

33. II. I say we have despised science. "What!" 
you exclaim, " are we not foremost in all discov- 
ery,* and is not the whole world giddy by reason, 15 
or unreason, of our inventions? " Yes, but do you 
suppose that is national work? That work is all 
done ui spite of the nation; by private people's zeal 
and money. We are glad enough, indeed, to make 
our profit of science ; we snap up anything in the 20 
way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly 
enough; but if the scientific man comes for a bone 
or a crust to its, that is another story. What have 
we publicly done for science? We are obliged to 
know what o'clock it is, for the safety of our ships, 25 
and therefore we pay for an Observatory; and we 
allow ourselves, in the person of our Parliament, to 

* Since this was written, the answer has become 
definite!}'- — No ; we having surrendered the field of Arctic 
discovery to the Continental nations, as being ourselves '30 
too poor to pay for ships, 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. \\ 

be annually tormented into doing something, in a 
slovenly way, for the British Museum; sullenly ap- 
prehending that to be a place for keeping stuffed 
birds in, to amuse our children. If anybody will 
5 pay for their own telescope, and resolve another 
nebula, we cackle over the discernment as if it were 
our own; if one in ten thousand of our hunting 
squires suddenly perceives that the earth was indeed 
made to be something else than a portion for foxes, 

lo and burrows in it himself, and tells us where the 
gold is, and where the coals, we understand that 
there is some use in that; and very properly knight 
him: but is the accident of his having found out 
how to employ himself usefully any credit to us? 

15 (The negation of such discovery among his brother 
squires may perhaps be some ^i^credit to us, if we 
would consider of it.) But if you doubt these gen- 
eralities, here is one fact for us all to meditate upon, 
illustrative of our love of science. Two years ago 

20 there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen 
to be sold in Bavaria: the best in existence, con- 
taining many specimens unique for perfectness, and 
one, unique as an example of a species (a whole 
kingdom of unknown living creatures being an- 

25 nounced by that fossil). This collection, of which 
the mere market worth, among private buyers, 
would probably have been some thousand or twelve 
hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation 
for seven hundred: but we would not give seven 

30 hundred, and the whole series would have been in 
the Munich museum at this moment, if Professor 



4« SESAME AND LILIES. 

Owen * had not, with loss of his own time, and pa- 
tient tormenting of the British pubHc in person of 
its representatives, got leave to give four hundred 
pounds at once, and himself become answerable for 
the other three! which the said public will doubtless 5 
pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing 
about the matter all the while; only always ready to 
cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg 
of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your 
annual expenditure for public purposes (a third of lo 
it for military apparatus,) is at least fifty millions. 
Now seven hundred pounds is to fifty million 
pounds, roughly, as seven-pence to two thousand 
pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman of unknown 
income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured 15 
from the fact that he spent two thousand a year 
on his park walls and footmen only, professes him- 
self fond of science; and that one of his servants 
comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection 
of fossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is to 20 
be had for the sum of seven-pence sterling; and 
that the gentleman, who is fond of science, and 
spends two thousand a year on his park, answers, 
after keeping his servant waiting several months, 
"Well! I'll give you four-pence for them, if you 25 
will be answerable for the extra three-pence your- 
self, till next year! " 

* I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission, 
which of course he could not with propriety have granted, 
had I asked it; but I consider it so important that the 30 
public should be aware of the fact, that I do what seems 
to me right, though rude, 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 43 

34. III. I say you have despised Art! *' What! " 
you again answer, " have we not Art exhibitions, 
miles long? and do not we pay thousands of pounds 
for single pictures? and have we not Art schools 
5 and institutions, more than ever nation had be- 
fore? " Yes, truly, but all that is for the sake of 
the shop. You would fain sell canvas as well as 
coals, and crockery as well as iron; you would take 
every other nation's bread out of its mouth if you 

10 could; * not being able to do that, your ideal of life 
is to stand in the thoroughfares of the world, like 
Ludgate apprentices, screaming to every passer-by, 
"What d'ye lack?" You know nothing of your 
own faculties or circumstances; you fancy that, 

15 among your damp, flat, fat fields of clay, you can 
have as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman among 
his bronzed vines, or the Italian under his volcanic 
cliffs; — that Art may be learned as book-keeping 
is, and when learned, will give you more books to 

20 keep. You care for pictures, absolutely, no more 
than you do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. 
There is always room on the wall for the bills to 
be read, — never for the pictures to be seen. You 
do not know what pictures you have (by repute) in 

25 the country, nor whether they are false or true, nor 
whether they are taken care of or not; in foreign 
countries, you calmly see the noblest existing pic- 

*That was our real idea of "Free Trade" — "All the 
trade to myself." You find now that by "competition" 
30 other people can manage to sell something as well as 
you— and now we call for Protection again. Wretches! 



44 SESAME AND LILIES. 

tures in the world rotting in abandoned wreck — 
(in Venice you saw the Austrian guns deliberately 
pointed at the palaces containing them), and if you 
heard that all the fine pictures in Europe were made 
into sand-bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, 5 
it would not trouble you so much as the chance of 
a brace or two of game less in your own bags, in 
a day's shooting. That is your national love of 
Art. 

35. IV. You have despised nature; that is to 10 
say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural 
scenery. The French revolutionists made stables 
of the cathedrals of France; you have made race- 
courses of the cathedrals of the earth. Your mie 
conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad car- 15 
riages round their aisles, and eat ofif their altars.* 
You have put a railroad-bridge over the falls of 
SchafYhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lu- 
cerne by Tell's chapel; you have destroyed the 
Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva; there is not 20 
a quiet valley in England that you have not filled 
with bellowing fire ; there is no particle left of Eng- 
lish land which you have not trampled coal ashes 
into t — nor any foreign city in which the spread 

*I meant that the beautiful places of the world— Swit- 25 
zerland, Italy, South Germany, and so on — are, indeed, 
the truest cathedrals — places to be reverent in, and to 
worship in ; and that we only care to drive through 
them ; and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. 

f I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding all 30 
the river shore 9,t Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 45 

of your presence is not marked among its fair old 
streets and happy gardens by a consuming white 
leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops: the 
Alps themselves, which your own poets used to 
5 love so reverently, you look upon as soaped poles 
in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to clii;ib 
and slide down again, with '* shrieks of delight." 
When you are past shrieking, having no human 
articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill 

10 the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, 
and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of 
conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of 
self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrow- 
fullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, tak- 

15 ing the deep inner significance of them, are the 
English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing 
themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the 
Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Chris- 
tian thanks for the gift of the vine, by assembling 

20 in knots in the " towers of the vineyards," and 
slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morn- 
ing till evening. It is pitiful, to have dim concep- 
tions of duty; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have 
conceptions like these, of mirth. 

25 36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is 
no need of words of mine for proof of this. I will 
merely print one of the newspaper paragraphs 
which I am in the habit of cutting out and throw- 
ing into my store-drawer; here is one from a ' Daily 

30 earth, from the mere drift of soot-laden air from places 
many miles away. 



46 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Telegraph ' of an early date this year (1865) ; (date 
which, though by me carelessly left unmarked, is 
easily discoverable; for on the back of the slip, there 
is the announcement that " yesterday the seventh 
of the special services of this year was performed 5 
by the Bishop of Ripon in St. Paul's";) it relates 
only one of such facts as happen now daily; this 
by chance having taken a form in w^hich it came 
before the coroner, I will print the paragraph in 
red. [Printed here in italics.] Be sure, the facts 10 
themselves are written in that colour, in a book 
which we shall all of us, literate or ilhterate, have to 
read our page of, some day. 

A?t ifigin'rywas held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy 
coro7ier, at the White Horse tavern, Christ Churchy Spital- 15 
fields, respecti7ig the death of Michael Collins, aged ^8 
years. Mary Collins, a 7niserable-looking woman, said 
that she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 
2, Cobb's Court, Christ Church. Deceased "was a " trans- 
lator " of boots. Witness went out and bought old boots ; ^^ 
deceased aftd his son made thejn into good ones^ and then 
witfiess sold them for what she could get at the shops, 
which was very little ijideed. Deceased and his son used 
to work 7iight a7id day to try a7id get a little bread a7id tea, 
and pay for the r 00771 {2s. a week), so as to keep the ho7ne 25 
together. O71 Friday-7iight week deceased got upfro77i 
his be7ich a7id bega7i to shiver. He threw dow7i the boots, 
sayi7ig, " So7nebody else 77iust finish the77i whe7t I a77t 
gone,for I ca7t do no 77iore." There was 710 fire, and he 
said, " /would be better if I was war77i." Wit7tess there- 30 
fore took two pairs of tra7islated boots * to sell at the 

*One of the things which we must very resolutely 
enforce, for the good of all classes, in our future arrange- 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 47 

shop, but she coicld only get i4d.for the two pairs, for the 

people at the shop said, " We tnust have our profits 

Witness got 141b. of coal, a?id a little tea and bread. Her 

son sat tcp the whole night to 7nake the " translations," to 

5 get money, but deceased died on Saturday tnorning. The 

family never had e7iough to eat. — Coroner : " // seems to 

me deplorable that you did not go into the workhouse.'' 

Witness : " We wanted the comforts of our little home'' 

A juror asked what the coinforts were, for he only saw a 

^o little straw in the corner of the room, the windows of 
which were broken. The witness began to cry, and said 
that they had a quilt a7id other little things. The 
deceased said he never would go into the workhouse, hi 
summer, whe?t the season was good, they sometimes 

15 7nade as 7nuch as los. profit in the week. They then 
always saved towards the 7iextweek, which was ge7ierally 
a bad one. In winter they 7nade not half so 77iuch. For 
three years they had been getting from bad to worse. — 
Cornelius Collins said that he had assisted his father si7ice 

20 1847. They used to work so far into the 7iight that both 
nearly lost their eyesight. Wit7tess now had a fil77i over 
his eyes. Five years ago deceased applied to the parish 
for aid. The relieving officer gave hi77i a 41b. loaf, a7id 
told him if he came again he should get the " st07ies.'' * 

25 ments, must be that they wear no " translated" article of 
dress. See the preface. 

* This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labour is 
curiously coincident in verbal form v^^ith a certain passage 
w^hich some of us may remember. It may perhaps be well 

30 to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting out of 
my store-drawer, from the ' Morning Post,' of about a 
parallel date, Friday, March loth, 1865: — "The salons of 

Mme. C , who did the honours with clever imitative 

grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, 

35 marquises, and counts— in fact, with the same male com- 
pany as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metternich 



48 SESAME AND LILIES. 

That disgusted deceased, and he zuoiild have iiothing to 
do with them since. They got worse and worse until last 
Friday week, when they had not eveji a halfpenny to buy 
a candle. Deceased then lay down on the straw, and said 
he could not live till morning. — A juror : " You are dying 5 
of starvation yourself, and you ought to go into the house 
until the S2immer. " — Witness : "■ If we went in, we should 
die. When we come out in the su7nmer, we should be like 
people dropped from the sky. No one would know us, 
and we would not have even a room. I could work now 10 
if I had food, for iny sight would get better.'' Dr. G. P. 
Walker said deceased died from syncope, from exhaustion 
frojn watit of food. The deceased had had no bedclothes. 
For four months he had had nothing but bread to eat. 



and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers and 15 
members of Parliament were present, and appeared to 
enjoy the animated and dazzling improper scene. On the 
second floor the supper tables were loaded with every 
delicacy of the season. That your readers may form some 
idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, I copy 20 
the menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests 
(about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johan- 
nisberg, Laffitte, Tokay, and champagne of the finest 
vintages were served most lavishly throughout the morn- 
ing. After supper dancing was resumed with increased 25 
animation, and the ball terminated with Sichaine diabolique 
and a cajtcan d'enfer at seven in the morning. (Morning 
service — ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the open- 
ing eyelids of the Morn.') Here is the menu: — 'Con- 
somme de volaille a la Bagration : 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies. 30 
Bouchees a la Talleyrand. Saumons froids, sauce Ravi- 
gote. Filets de boeuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises, 
chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies 
gras, buissons d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees 
blanches aux fruits, gateaux mancini, parisiens et parisi- 35 
ennes. Fromages glaces. Ananas. Dessert.'" 



• OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 49 

There was not a particle of fat in the body. There laas 
no disease^ but if tJiere had been medical atte7idance, he 
might have survived the syncope or fainting. The 
coro7ier having remarked upon the painful nature of the 
Scase, the jury returned the following verdict, " That 
deceased died from exhaustion from wajit of food and the 
com7non 7iecessaries of life ; also through want of medical 
aid.'' 

37. " Why would witness not go into the work- 

10 house?" you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a 
prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have 
not ; for of course every one who lakes a pension 
from Government goes into the workhouse on a 
grand scale: ^ only the workhouses for the rich do 

15 not involve the idea of work, and should be called 
play-houses. But the poor like to die indepen- 
dently, it appears; perhaps if we made the play- 
houses for them pretty and pleasant enough, or 
gave them their pensions at home, and allowed 

20 them a little introductory peculation with the public 
money, their minds might be reconciled to the con- 
ditions. Meantime, here are the facts: we make our 
relief either so insulting to them, or so painful, that 
they rather die than take it at our hands; or, for 

25 third alternative, we leave them so untaught and 
foolish that they starve like brute creatures, wild 
and dumb, not knowing what to do, or what to 

♦Please observe this statement, and think of it, and 

consider how it happens that a poor old woman will be 

30 ashamed to take a shilling a week from the country — 

but no one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand 

a year 



50 SESAME AND LILIES. 

ask. I say, you despise compassion; if you did not, 
such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossi- 
ble in a Christian country as a deliberate assassina- 
tion permitted in its public streets.* '' Christian " 

* I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the ' Pall 5 
Mall Gazette' established; for the power of the press 
in the hands of highly-educated men, in independent posi- 
tion, and of honest purpose, may indeed become all that 
it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will 
therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason 10 
of my respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed 
an article in its third number, page 5, which was wrong 
in every word of it, with the intense wrongness which only 
an honest man can achieve who has taken a false turn of 
thought in the outset, and is following it, regardless 15 
of consequences. It contained at the end this notable 
passage : — 

" The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, 
and the bedstead and blankets of affliction, are the very 
utmost that the law ought to give to outcasts 7Jierely as 20 
outcasts.'' I merely put beside this expression of the 
gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the mes- 
sage which Isaiah was ordered to " lift up his voice like 
a trumpet" in declaring to the gentlemen of his day: "Ye 
fast for strife, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. 25 
Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread 
to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast 
out (margin, 'afflicted') to thy house?" The falsehood 
on which the writer had mentally founded himself, as 
previously stated by him, was this: "To confound the 30 
functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of 
the dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and 
pernicious error," This sentence is so accurately and ex- 
quisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in 
our minds before we can deal with any existing problem 35 
of national distress. " To understand that the dispensers 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 5 1 

did I say? Alas, if we were but wholesomely un- 
Christian, it would be impossible: it is our imagi- 
nary Christianity that helps us to commit these 
crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our faith, for 
5 the lewd sensation of it ; dressing it up, like every- 
thing else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of 
the organ and aisle, of dawn-service and twilight- 
revival — the Christianity which we do not fear to 
mix the mockery of, pictorially, with our play about 

lo the devil, in our Satanellas, — Roberts, — Fausts; 
chanting hymns through traceried windows for 
background effect, and artistically modulating the 
" Dio " through variation on variation of mimicked 
prayer: (while we distribute tracts, next day, for the 

15 benefit of uncultivated swearers, upon what we sup- 
pose to be the signification of the Third Command- 
ment; — ) this gas-lighted, and gas-inspired, Chris- 
tianity, we are triumphant in, and draw back the 
hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who 

20 dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian 
righteousness in a plain English word or deed; to 
make Christian law any rule of life, and found one 

of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and 
should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom 

25 of hand as much greater and franker than that possible to 
individual charity, as the collective national wisdom and 
power may be supposed greater than those of any single 
person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauper- 
ism." (Since this was written the ' Pall Mall Gazette' 

30 has become a mere party paper — like the rest; but it 
writes well, and does more good than mischief on the 
whole.) 



52 SESAME AXD LILIES. 

National act or hope thereon, — we know too well 
what our faith comes to for that! You might 
sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true 
action or passion out of your modern English re- 
ligion. You had better get rid of the smoke, and 5 
the organ pipes, both: leave them, and the Gothic 
windows, and the painted glass, to the property 
man; give up your carburetted hydrogen ghost in 
one healthy expiration, and look after Lazarus at 
the doorstep. For there is a true Church wherever lo 
one hand meets another helpfully, and that is the 
only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or 
ever shall be. 

38. All these pleasures then, and all these virtues, 
I repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, ^5 
men among you who do not; by whose work, by 
whose strength, by whose life, by whose death, you 
live, and never thank them. Your wealth, your 
amusement, your pride, would all be alike impossi- 
ble, but for those whom you scorn or forget. The 20 
policeman, who is walking up and down the black 
lane all night to watch the guilt you have created 
there; and may have his brains beaten out, and be 
maimed for life, at any moment, and never be 
thanked; the sailor wrestling with the sea's rage; 25 
the quiet student poring over his book or his vial; 
the common worker, without praise, and nearly 
without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses 
drag your carts, hopeless, and spurned of all: these 
are the men by whom England lives ; but they are 30 
not the nation; they are only the body and nervous 



OF KIXGS' TREASURIES. 53 

force of it, acting still from old habit in a convulsive 
perseverance, while the mind is gone. Our Na- 
tional wish and purpose are only to be amused; our 
National religion is the performance of church ccre- 
5 monies, and preaching of soporific truths (or un- 
truths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we 
amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amuse- 
ment is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of 
parched throat and wandering eyes — senseless, dis- 

lo solute, merciless. How literally that word Dis- 
Ease, the Negation and possibility of Ease, ex- 
presses the entire moral state of our English In- 
dustry and its Amusements! 

39. When men are rightly occupied, their amuse- 

15 ment grows out of their work, as the colour-petals 
out of a fruitful flower; — when they are faithfully 
helpful and compassionate, all their emotions be- 
come steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the 
soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, 

2" having no true business, we pour our whole mas- 
culine energy into the false business of money- 
making; and having no true emotion, we must have 
false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not 
innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and 

25 darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their pictures on 
cavern walls, which men had to dig to detect. The 
justice we do not execute, we mimic in the novel 
and on the stage; for the beauty we destroy in na- 
ture, we substitute the metamorphosis of the panto- 

30 mime, and (the human nature of us imperatively re- 
quiring awe and sorrow of some kind) for the noble 



54 SESAME AND LILIES. 

grief we should have borne with our fellows, and 
the pure tears we should have wept with them, we 
gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather 
the night-dew of the grave. 

40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance 5 
of these things ; the facts are frightful enough ; — the 
measure of national fault involved in them is per- 
haps not as great as it would at first seem. We 
permit, or cause, thousands of deaths daily, but we 
mean no harm; we set fire to houses, and ravage 10 
peasants' fields, yet we should be sorry to find we 
had injured anybody. We are still kind at heart; 
still capable of virtue, but only as children are. 
Chalmers, at the end of his long life, having had 
much power with the public, being plagued in some i5 
serious matter by a reference to " public opinion," 
uttered the impatient exclamation, *' The public is 
just a great baby! " And the reason that I have 
allowed all these graver subjects of thought to mix 
themselves up with an inquiry into methods of 20 
reading, is that, the more I see of our national faults 
or miseries, the more they resolve themselves into 
conditions of childish illiterateness and want of edu- 
cation in the most ordinary habits of thought. It 
is, I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, not dulness of 25 
brain, which we have to lament; but an unreach- 
able schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from 
the true schoolboy's in its incapacity of being 
helped, because it acknowledges no master. 

41. There is a curious type of us given in one of 30 
the lovely, neglected works of the last of our great 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 55 

painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale 
churchyard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, 
and folded morning sky beyond. And unmindful 
alike of these, and of the dead who have left these 

5 for other valleys and for other skies, a group of 
schoolboys have piled their little books upon a 
grave, to strike them off with stones. So, also, we 
play with the words of the dead that would teach 
us, and strike them far from us with our bitter, 

lo reckless will; little thinking that those leaves which 
the wind scatters had been piled, not only upon a 
gravestone, but upon the seal of an enchanted vault 
— nay, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, 
who would awake for us, and walk with us, if we 

15 knew but how to call them by their names. How 
often, even if we lift the marble entrance gate, do 
we but wander among those old kings in their re- 
pose, and finger the robes they lie in, and stir the 
crowns on their foreheads, and still they are silent 

20 to us, and seem but a dusty imagery; because we 
know not the incantation of the heart that would 
wake them; — which, if they once heard, they would 
start up to meet us in their power of long ago, nar- 
rowly to look upon us, and consider us; and, as the 

25 fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, saying, 
" Art thou also become weak as we — art thou also 
become one of us?" so would these kings, with 
their undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, say- 
ing, " Art thou also become pure and mighty of 

30 heart as we? art thou also become one of us? " 

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind—" mag- 



56 SESAME AND LILIES. 

nanimous " — to be this, is indeed to be great in 
life; to become this increasingly, is, indeed, to *' ad- 
vance in life," — in life itself — not in the trappings 
of it. My friends, do you remember that old 
Scythian custom, when the head of a house died? 5 
How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in 
his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses; 
and each of them placed him at his table's head, 
and all feasted in his presence? Suppose it were. 
oflfered to you in plain words, as it is offered to you lo 
in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian 
honour, gradually, while you yet thought yourself 
alive. Suppose the offer were this: You shall die 
slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh 
petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted i5 
group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, 
and sink through the earth into the ice of Caina; 
but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more 
gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have more 
orders on its breast — crowns on its heads, if you 20 
will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout 
round it, crowd after it up and down the streets; 
build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' 
heads all the night long; your soul shall stay 
enough within it to know what they do, and feel 25 
the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, 
and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull ; — no 
more. * Would you take the offer, verbally made by 
the death-angel? Would the meanest among us 
take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we 30 
grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 57 

US grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man 
accepts it, who desires to advance in Hfe without 
knowing what Hfe is; who means only that he is 
to get more horses, and more footmen, and more 
5 fortune, and more public honour, and — not more 
personal soul. He only is advancing in life, whose 
heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose 
brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living * 
peace. And the men who have this life in them are 

lo the true lords or kings of the earth — they, and they 
only. All other kingships, so far as they are true, 
ue only the practical issue and expression of theirs ; 
if less than this, they are either dramatic royalties, 
— costly shows, set off, indeed, with real jewels in- 

15 stead of tinsel — but still only the toys of nations; or 
else, they are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or 
the mere active and practical issue of national folly; 
for which reason I have said of them elsewhere, 
" yisible governments are the toys of some nations, 

20 the diseases of others, the harness of some, the bur- 
dens of more." 

43. But I have no words for the wonder with 
which I hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among 
thoughtful men, as if governed nations were a per- 

25 sonal property, and might be bought and sold, or 
otherwise acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their 
king was to feed, and whose fleece he was to gather; 
as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base kings, 
" people-eating," were the constant and proper title 

30 of all monarchs ; and enlargement of a king's do- 

* " t6 5^ <bpbvt)ixa.rov irveijfjLaTos fwT/ Kal elp-qvq.'' — Rom. viii. 6. 



58 SESAME AND LILIES. 

minion meant the same thing as the increase of a 
private man's estate! Kings who think so, however 
powerful, can no more be the true kings of the na- 
tion than gadflies are the kings of a horse; they 
suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not guide 5 
it. They, and their courts, and their armies are, if 
one could see clearly, only a large species of marsh 
mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and melodious, 
band-mastered trumpeting, in the summer air; the 
twilight being, perhaps, sometimes fairer, but lo 
hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists of 
midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule 
quietly, if at all, and hate ruling; too many of them 
make " il gran rifiuto"; and if they do not, the 
mob, as soon as they are likely to become useful i5 
to it, is pretty sure to make iU " gran rifiuto " of 
them. 

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, 
some day, if ever day comes when he will estima\e 
his dominion by the force of it, — not the geographi- 20 
cal boundaries. It matters very little whether Trent 
cuts you a cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a 
castle less there. But it does matter to you, king of 
men, whether you can verily say to this man " Go," 
and he goeth; and to another, *' Come," and he 25 
cometh. Whether you can turn your people, as you 
can Trent — and where it is that you bid them come, 
and where go. It matters to you, king of men, 
whether your people hate you, and die by you, or 
love you, and live by you. You may measure your 30 
dominion by multitudes, better than by miles; and 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 59 

count degrees of love-latitude, not from, but to, 
a wonderfully warm and infinite equator. 

45. Measure! — nay, you cannot measure. Who 
shall measure the difference between the power of 
5 those who " do and teach," and who are greatest 
in the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven — and the 
power of those who undo, and consume — whose 
power, at the fullest, is only the power of the moth 
and the rust? Strange! to think how the Moth- 

10 kings lay up treasures for the moth; and the Rust- 
kings, who are to their people's strength as rust to 
armour, lay up treasures for the rust; and the 
Robber-kings, treasures for the robber; but how 
few kings have ever laid up treasures that needed 

15 no guarding — treasures of which, the more thieves 
there were, the better! Broidered robe, only to be 
rent; helm and sword, only to be dimmed; jewel 
and gold, only to be scattered; — there have been 
three kinds of kings who have gathered these. 

20 Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth order of 
kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of 
long ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure, 
which the jewel and gold could not equal, neither 
should it be valued with pure gold. A web made 

25 fair in the weaving, by Athena's shuttle; an armour, 
forged in divine fire by Vulcanian force; a gold to 
be mined in the very sun's red heart, where he sets 
over the Delphian cliffs — deep-pictured tissue; — 
impenetrable armour; — potable gold; — the three 

30 great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still 
calling to us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, 



6o SESAME AND LILIES. 

to lead lis, with their winged power, and guide us, 
with their unerring eyes, by the path which no fowl 
knoweth, and which the vulture's eye has not seen! 
Suppose kings should ever arise, who heard and 
believed this word, and at last gathered and brought 5 
forth treasures of — Wisdom — for their people? 

46. Think what an amazing business that would 
be! How inconceivable, in the state of our present 
national wisdom! That we should bring up our 
peasants to a book exercise instead of a bayonet 10 
exercise! — organize, drill, maintain with pay, and 
good generalship, armies of thinkers, instead of 
armies of stabbers! — find national amusement in 
reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds; give prizes 
for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash 15 
on a target. What an absurd idea it seems, put \ 
fairly in words, that the wealth of the capitalists of 
civilized nations should ever come to support lit- 
erature instead of war! 

47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you 20 
a single sentence out of the only book, properly 
to be called a book, that I have yet written myself, 
the one that will stand, (if anything stand,) surest 
and longest of all work of mine: 

" It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in 25 
Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which sup- 
ports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much 
money to support them; for most of the men who 
wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, 
men's bodies and souls have both to be bought; and the 30 
best tools of war for them besides, which makes such war 
costly to the maximum; not to speak of the cost of base 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 6i 

fear, and angry suspicion, between nations, which have 
not grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to 
buy an hour's peace of mind with; as, at present, France 
and England, purchasing of each other ten millions ster- 
5 ling worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably light 
crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, 
and granaried by the ' science ' of the modern political 
economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). And, 
all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the 

lo enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are 
repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear 
to have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being 
the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covet- 
ousness of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of 

15 faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, 
in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to 
each person," 

48. France and England literally, observe, buy 
panic of each other; they pay, each of them, for ten 

20 thousand-thousand pounds'-worth of terror, a year. 
Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions' 
worth of panic annually, they made up their minds 
to be at peace with each other, and buy ten millions' 
worth of knowledge annually; and that each nation 

25 spent its ten thousand-thousand pounds a year in 
founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal 
museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might 
it not be better somewhat for both French and 
English? 

30 49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. 
Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal 
or national libraries will be founded in every con- 
siderable city, with a royal series of books in them ; 



62 SESAME AND LILIES. 

the same series in every one of them, chosen books, 
the best in every kind, prepared for that national 
series in the most perfect way possible; their text 
printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, 
and divided into pleasant volumes, light in the hand, 5 
beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of 
binders' work; and that these great libraries will be 
accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all 
times of the day and evening; strict law being en- 
forced for this cleanliness and quietness. lo 

50. I could shape for you other plans, for art 
galleries, and for natural history galleries, and for 
many precious — many, it seems to me, needful — 
things; but this book plan is the easiest and need» 
fullest, and would prove a considerable tonic to ^5 
what we call our British Constitution, which has 
fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and 
evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have 
got its corn laws repealed for it; try if you cannot 
get corn laws established for it, dealing in a better ^o 
bread; — bread made of that old enchanted Arabian 
grain, the Sesame, which opens doors; — doors, not 
of robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries. 



Note to § 30. 



Respecting the increase of rent by the deaths of 
the poor, for evidence of which, see the preface to 25 
the Medical Officer's report to the Privy Council, 
just published, there are suggestions in its preface 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 63 

which will make some stir among us, I fancy, re- 
specting which let me note these points following: — 
There are two theories on the subject of land now 
abroad, and in contention; both false. 
5 The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have 
always existed, and must continue to exist, a cer- 
tain number of hereditarily sacred persons to whom 
the earth, air, and water of the world belong, as 
personal property; of which earth, air, and water, 

10 these persons may, at their pleasure, permit, or for- 
bid, the rest of the human race to eat, to breathe, 
or to drink. This theory is not for many years 
longer tenable. The adverse theory is that a di- 
vision of the land of the world among the mob of 

15 the world would immediately elevate the said mob 
into sacred personages; that houses would then 
build themselves, and corn grow of itself; and that 
everybody would be able to live, without doing any 
work for his living. This theory would also be 

20 found highly untenable in practice. 

It will, however, require some rough experiments 
and rougher catastrophes, before the generality of 
persons will be convinced that no law concerning 
anything — least of all concerning land, for either 

25 holding or dividing it, or renting it high, or renting 
it low — would be of the smallest ultimate use tO' the 
people, so long as the general contest for life, and 
for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal 
competition. That contest, in an unprincipled na- 

30 tion, will take one deadly form or another, whatever 
laws you make against it. For instance, it would be 



64 SESAME AND LILIES. 

an entirely wholesome law for England, if it could 
be carried, that maximum limits should be assigned 
to incomes according to classes; and that every no- 
bleman's income should be paid to him as a fixed 
salary or pension by the nation; and not squeezed 5 
by him in variable sums, at discretion, out of the 
tenants of his land. But if you could get such a 
law passed to-morrow, and if, which would be far- 
ther necessary, you could fix the value of the as- 
signed incomes by making a given weight of pure lo 
bread for a given sum, a twelve-month would not 
pass before another currency would have been 
tacitly established, and the power of accumulated 
wealth would have re-asserted itself in some other . 
article, or some other imaginary sign. There is ^5 
only one cure for public distress — and that is public 
education, directed to make men thoughtful, merci- 
ful, and just. There are, indeed, many laws 
conceivable which would gradually better and 
strengtlien the national temper; but, for the most 20 
part, they are such as the national temper must be 
much bettered before it would bear. A nation in 
its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child 
by back-boards, but when it is old it cannot that 
way strengthen its crooked spine. 25 

And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, 
is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the 
principal question remains inexorable, — Who is to 
dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the 
hard and dirty work for the rest — and for what pay? 30 
Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 65 

what pay? Who is to do no work, and for what 
pay? And there are curious moral and religious 
questions connected with these. How far is it law- 
ful to suck a portion of the soul out of a great many 
5 persons, in order to put the abstracted psychical 
quantities together and make one very beautiful or 
ideal soul? If we had to deal with mere blood in- 
stead of spirit, (and the thing might literally be 
done — as it has been done with infants before now) 

10 — so that it were possible by taking a certain quan- 
tity of blood from the arms of a given number of 
the mob, and putting it all into one person, to make 
a more azure-blooded gentleman of him, the thing 
would of course be managed; but secretly, I should 

15 conceive. But now, because it is brain and soul 
that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done 
quite openly, and we live, we gentlemen, on deli- 
catest prey, after the manner of weasels ; that is to 
say, we keep a certain number of clowns digging 

20 and ditching, and generally stupefied, in order that 
we, being fed gratis, may have all the thinking and 
feeling to ourselves. Yet there is a great deal to 
be said for- this. A highly-bred and trained Eng- 
lish, French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much 

25 more a lady), is a great production, — a better pro- 
duction than most statues; being beautifully col- 
oured as well as shaped, and plus all the brains; a 
glorious thing to look at, a wonderful thing to talk 
to; and you cannot have it, any more than a pyra- 

30 mid or a church, but by sacrifice of much contrib- 
uted life. And it is, perhaps, better to build a 



^(> SESAME AND LILIES. 

beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or 
steeple — and more delightful to look up reverently 
to a creature far above us, than to a wall; only the 
beautiful human creature will have some duties io 
do in return — duties of living belfry and rampart — 
of which presently. 



LECTURE II.— LILIES. 

•' Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be 
made cheerful, and bloom as the lily; and the barren 
places of Jordan shall run wild with wood." — Isaiah xxxv. 
I. (Septuagmt.) 

51. It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is 
the sequel of one previously given, that I should 
shortly state to you my general intention in both. 
The questions specially proposed to you in the first, 
5 namely. How and What to Read, rose out of a far 
deeper one, which it was my endeavour to make 
you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why 
to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever 
advantage we possess in the present day in the dif- 

10 fusion of education and of literature, can only be 
rightly used by any of us when we have appre- 
hended clearly what education is to lead to, and lit- 
erature to teach. I wish you to see that both well- 
directed moral training and well-chosen reading 

15 lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided 
and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of 
it, in the truest sense, kingly; conferring indeed the 
purest kingship that can exist among men: too 
many other kingships (however distinguished by 

67 



68 SESAME AND LILIES. 

visible insignia or material power) being either 
spectral, or tyrannous; — spectral — that is to say, 
aspects and shadows only of royalty, hollow as 
death, and which only the *' likeness of a kingly 
crown have on; " or else tyrannous — that is to say, 5 
substituting their own will for the law of justice 
and love by which all true kings rule. 

52. There is, then, I repeat — and as I want to 
leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall 
end with it — only one pure kind of kingship ; an in- 10 
evitable and eternal kind, crowned or not: the king- 
ship, namely, which consists in a stronger moral 
state, and a truer thoughtful state, than that of 
others; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to raise 
them. Observe that word ''State"; we have got into ^5 
a loose way of using it. It means literally the stand- 
ing and stability of a thing; and you have the full 
force of it in the derived word " statue " — " the im- 
movable thing." A king's majesty or *' state," then, 
and the right of his kingdom to be called a state, 20 
depends on the movelessness of both: — without 
tremor, without quiver of balance; established and 
enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which 
nothing can alter, nor overthrow. 

53. Believing that all literature and all education 25 
are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this 
calm, beneficent, and therefore kingly, power, — 
first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over 
all around us, — I am now going to ask you to con- 
sider with me, farther, what special portion or kind 30 
of this royal authority, arising out of noble educa- 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 69 

tion, may rightly be possessed by women; and how 
far they also are called to a true queenly power, — 
not in their households merely, but over all within 
their sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly 
5 understood and exercised this royal or gracious in- 
fluence, the order and beauty induced by such be- 
nignant power would justify us in speaking of the 
territories over which each of them reigned, as 
" Queens' Gardens." 

10 54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by 

a far deeper question, which — strange though this 

may seem — remains among many of us yet quite 

undecided, in spite of its infinite importance. 

We cannot determine what the queenly power of 

15 women should be, until we are agreed what their 
ordinary power should be. We cannot consider how 
education may fit them for any widely extending 
duty, until we are agreed what is their true constant 
duty. And there never was a time when wilder 

20 words were spoken, or more vain imagination per- 
mitted, respecting this question — quite vital to all 
social happiness. The relations of the womanly to 
the manly nature, their different capacities of intel- 
lect or of virtue, seem never to have been yet esti- 

25 mated with entire consent. We hear of the " mis- 
sion " and of the " rights " of Woman, as if these 
could ever be separate from the mission and the 
rights of Man; — as if she and her lord were crea- 
tures of independent kind, and of irreconcilable 

30 claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less 
wrong — perhaps even more foolishly wrong (for I 



70 SESAME AND LILIES, 

will anticipate thus far what I hope to prove) — is 
the idea that woman is only the shadow and at- 
tendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless 
and servile obedience, and supported altogether in 
her weakness, by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. 5 

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors re- 
specting her who was made to be the helpmate of 
man. As if he could be helped effectively by a 
shadow, or worthily by a slave! 

55. Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at 10 
some clear and harmonious idea (it must be har- 
monious if it is true) of what womanly mind and 
virtue are in power and office, with respect to 
man's; and how their relations, rightly accepted, 
aid, and increase, the vigour, and honour, and au- 15 
thority of both. 

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the 
last lecture: namely, that the first use of education 
was to enable us to consult with the wisest and the 
greatest men on all points of earnest difficulty. 20 
That to use books rightly, was to go to them for 
help: to appeal to them when our own knowledge 
and power of thought failed: to be led by them into 
wider sight, — purer conception, — than our own, 
and receive from them the united sentence of the 25 
judges and councils of all time, against our solitary 
and unstable opinion. 

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the 
greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages 
are agreed in any wise on this point : let us hear the 30 
testimony they have left respecting what they held 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 7 1 

to be the true dignity of woman, and her mode of 
help to man. 

56. And first let us take Shakespeare. 
Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no 
5 heroes;— he has only heroines. There is not one 
entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the 
slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for 
the purposes of the stage; and the still slighter 
Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In 
10 his laboured and perfect plays you have no hero. 
Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had 
not been so great as to leave him the prey erf every 
base practice round him; but he is the only exam- 
ple even approximating to the heroic type. Cori- 
15 olanus— Caesar— Antony stand in flawed strength, 
and fall by their vanities;— Hamlet is indolent, and 
drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the 
Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to ad- 
verse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely no- 
20 ble at heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of 
true use at the critical time, and he sinks into the 
ofifice of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble, 
is yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, com- 
forted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there is 
25 hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, 
steadfast in grave hope, and errorless purpose ; Cor- 
delia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, 
Queen Catherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, 
Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, 
30 are all faultless; conceived in the highest heroic 
type of humanity. 



72 SESAME AND LILIES. 

57. Then observe, secondly, 

The catastrophe of every play is caused always 
by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if 
there by any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a 
woman, and, failing that, there is none. The catas- 5 
trophe of King Lear is owing to his own want of 
judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunderstand- 
ing of his children; the virtue of his one true daugh- 
ter would have saved him from all the injuries of 
the others, unless he had cast her away from him; 10 
as it is, she all but saves him. 

Of Othello I need not trace the tale; nor the one 
weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority 
of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second 
woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies i5 
in wild testimony against his error: 

" Oh, murderous coxcomb ! what should such a fool 
Do with so good a wife ? " 

In Romeo and Juliet, the w^ise and brave 
strategem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue 20 
by the reckless impatience of her husband. In 
The Winter's Tale, and in Cymbeline, the happi- 
ness and existence of two princely households, 
lost through long years, and imperilled to the death 
by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are re- 25 
deemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom 
of the wives. In Measure for Measure, the foul 
injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the 
brother, are opposed to the victorious truth and 
adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, 30 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 73 

the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would 
have saved her son from all evil; his momentary 
forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last, 
granted, saves him — not, indeed, from death, but 
5 from the curse of living as the destroyer of his 
country. 

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against 
the fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child? 
— of Helena, against the petulance and insult of a 

lo careless youth? — of the patience of Hero, the pas- 
sion of Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of 
the " unlessoned girl," who appears among the 
helplessness, the blindness, and the vindictive pas- 
sions of men, as a gentle angel, bringing courage 

15 and safety by her presence, and defeating the worst 
malignities of crime by what women are fancied 
most to fail in, — precision and accuracy of thought. 
58. Observe, further, among all the principal fig- 
ures in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak 

20 woman — Ophelia; and it is because she fails Ham- 
let at the critical moment, and is not, and cannot 
in her nature be, a guide to him when he needs her 
most, that all the bitter catastrophe follows. Fi- 
nally, though there are three wicked women among 

25 the principal figures. Lady Macbeth, Regan, and 
Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful ex- 
ceptions to the ordinary laws of life; fatal in their 
influence also, in proportion to the power for good 
which they have abandoned. 

30 Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony 
to the position and character of w^omen in human 



74 SESAME AND LILIES. 

life. He represents them as infallibly faithful and 
wise counsellors, — incorruptibly just and pure ex- 
amples, — strong always to sanctity, even when they 
cannot save. 

59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowl- 5 
edge of the nature of man, — still less in his under- 
standing of the causes and courses of fate, — but 
only as the writer who has given us the broadest 
view of the conditions and modes of ordinary 
thought in modern society, I ask you next to re- 10 
ceive the witness of Walter Scott. 

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings 
as of no value, and though the early romantic 
poetry is very beautiful, its testimony is of no 
weight, other than that of a boy's ideal. But his 15 
true works, studied from Scottish life, bear a true 
witness; and, in the whole range of these, there are 
but three men who reach the heroic type * — Dandie 
Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse; of these, one 
is a border farmer; another a freebooter; the third 20 
a soldier in a bad cause. And these touch the ideal 

*I ought, in order to make this assertion fully under- 
stood, to have noted the various weaknesses which lower 
the ideal of other great characters of men in the Waverley 
novels — the selfishness and narrowness of thought in 25 
Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward 
Glendinning, and the like; and I ought to have noticed 
that there are several quite perfect characters sketched 
sometimes in the backgrounds; three — let us accept joy- 
ously this courtesy to England and her soldiers — are 3c 
English officers: Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and 
Colonel Mannering. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 75 

of heroism only in their courage and faith, together 
with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly ap- 
plied, intellectual power; while his younger men are 
the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, 
5 and only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, sur- 
vive, not vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sus- 
tain. Of any disciplined, or consistent character, 
earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, or dealing 
with forms of hostile evil, definitely challenged and 

lo resolutely subdued, there is no trace in his con- 
ceptions of young men. Whereas in his imagina- 
tions of women, — in the characters of Ellen 
Douglas, of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, 
Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgaunt- 

15 let, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans, 
— with endless varieties of grace, tenderness, and 
intellectual power, we find in all a quite infallible 
sense of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and 
untiring self-sacrifice, to even the appearance of 

20 duty, much more to its real claims; and, finally, a 
patient wisdom of deeply-restrained affection, which 
does infinitely more than protect its objects from 
a momentary error; it graduahy forms, animates, 
and exalts the characters of the unworthy lovers, 

25 until, at the close of the tale, we are just able, and 
no more, to take patience in hearing of their unmer- 
ited success. 

So that, in all cases, with Scott as with Shake- 
speare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches, 

30 and guides the youth ; it is never, by any chance, the 
youth who watches over, or educates, his mistress. 



76 SESAME AND LILIES. 

60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver testi- 
mony — that of the great ItaHans and Greeks. You 
know well the plan of Dante's great poem — that it 
is a love-poem to his dead lady; a song of praise for 
her watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, 5 
never to love, she yet saves him from destruction — 
saves him from hell. He is going eternally astray 
in despair; she comes down from heaven to his 
help, and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his 
teacher, interpreting for him the most difficult 10 
truths, divine and human; and leading him, with 
rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. 

I do not insist upon Dante's conceptions; if I 
began, I could not cease: besides, you might think 
this a wild imagination of one poet's heart. So I 15 
will rather read to you a few verses of the deliberate 
writing of a knight of Pisa to his living lady, wholly 
characteristic of the feeling of all the noblest men 
of the thirteenth, or early fourteenth, century, pre- 
served among many other such records of knightly 20 
honour and love, which Dante Rossetti has gath- 
ered for us from among the early Italian poets. 

" For lo! thy law is passed 
That this my love should manifestly be 

To serve and honour thee: 25 

And so I do; and my delight is full, 
Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 

" Without almost, I am all rapturous, 
Since thus my will was set: 
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence: 30 
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 
A pain or a regret. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 77 

But on thee dwells my every thought and sense; 
Considering that from thee all virtues spread 

As from a fountain head, — 
That in thy gift is wisdom" s best avail, 
5 And honour without fail; 

With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 

" Lady, since I conceived 
Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, 
JO My life has been apart 

In shining brightness and the place of truth; 

Which till that time, good sooth. 
Groped among shadows in a darken'd place, 
Where many hours and days 
J5 It hardly ever had remember'd good. 

But now my servitude 
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 

A man from a wild beast 
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived." 

20 61. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight 
would have had a lower estimate of women than 
this Christian lover. His spiritual subjection to 
them was indeed not so absolute; but as regards 
their own personal character, it was only because 

25 you could not have followed me so easily, that I 
did not take the Greek women instead of Shake- 
speare's; and instance, for chief ideal types of hu- 
man beauty and faith, the simple mother's and 
wife's heart of Andromache; the divine, yet re- 

3ojected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful kindness 
and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the 
housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch 
upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly 



78 SESAME AND LILIES. 

devoted piety of the sister and daughter, in An- 
tigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-Hke 
and silent ; and, finally, the expectation of the resur- 
rection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks in the 
return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, to save 5 
her husband, had passed calmly through the bitter- 
ness of death. 

62. Now I could multiply witness upon witness 
of this kind upon you if I had time. I would take 
Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a Legend 10 
of Good Women; but no Legend of Good Men. 

I would take Spenser, and show you how all his 
fairy knights are sometimes deceived and some- 
times vanquished; but the soul of Una is never 
darkened, and the spear of Britomart is never 15 
broken. Nay, I could go back into the mythical 
teaching of the most ancient times, and show you 
how the great people, — by one of whose princesses 
it was appointed that the Lawgiver of all the earth 
should be educated, rather than by his own kindred: 20 
— how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of 
nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form 
of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the 
weaver's shuttle; and how the name and the form of 
that spirit, adopted, believed, and obeyed by the 25 
Greeks, became that Athena of the olive-helm, and 
cloudy shield, to faith in whom you owe, down 
to this date, whatever you hold most precious in art, 
in literature, or in types of national virtue. 

63. But I will not wander into this distant and 30 
mythical element; I w^ill only ask you to give its 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 79 

legitimate value to the testimony of these great 
poets and men of the world, — consistent, as you 
see it is, on this head. I will ask you whether it 
can be supposed that these men, in the main work 

5 of their lives, are amusing themselves with a ficti- 
tious and idle view of the relations between man 
and woman; nay, worse than fictitious or idle; for a 
thing may be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were 
possible; but this, their ideal of woman, is, accord- 

lo ing to our common idea of the marriage relation, 
wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, is not to 
guide, nor even to think for herself. The man is 
always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the 
ruler, the superior in knowledge and discretion, as 

15 in power. 

64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our 
minds on this matter? Are all these great men mis- 
taken, or are we? Are Shakespeare and ^schylus, 
Dante and Homer, merely dressing dolls for us; 

20 or, worse than dolls, unnatural visions, the realiza- 
tion of which, were it possible, would bring anarchy 
into all households and ruin into all affections? 
Nay, if you can suppose this, take lastly the evi- 
dence of facts given by the human heart itself. In 

25 all Christian ages which have been remarkable for 
their purity of progress, there has been absolute 
yielding of obedient devotion, by the lover, to his 
mistress. I say obedient: — not merely enthusiastic 
and worshipping in imagination, but entirely sub- 

30 ject, receiving from the beloved woman, however 
young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and 



8o SESAME AND LILIES. 

the reward of all toil, but, so far as any choice Is 
open, or any question difficult of decision, the direc- 
tion of all toil. That chivalry, to the abuse and dis- 
honour of which are attributable primarily what- 
ever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and 5 
ignoble in domestic relations; and to the original 
purity and power of which we owe the defence alike 
of faith, of law, and of love; — that chivalry, I say, 
in its very first conception of honourable life, as- 
sumes the subjection of the young knight to the lo 
command — should it even be the command in ca- 
price — of his lady. It assumes this, because its 
masters knew that the first and necessary impulse 
of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of 
blind service to its lady: that where that true faith 15 
and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked pas- 
sion must be; and that in this rapturous obedience 
to the single love of his youth, is the sanctification 
of all man's strength, and the continuance of all his 
purposes. And this, not because such obedience 20 
would be safe, or honpurable, were it ever rendered 
to the unworthy; but because it ought to be impos- 
sible for every noble youth — it is impossible for 
every one rightly trained — to love any one whose 
gentle counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful 25 
command he can hesitate to obey. 

65. I do not insist by any farther argument on 
this, for I think it should commend itself at once to 
your knowledge of what has been, and to your feel- 
ing of what should be. You cannot think that the 30 
buckling on of the knight's armour by his lady's 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 8 1 

hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It 
is the type of an eternal truth — that the soul's 
armour is never well set to the heart unless a 
woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when 
5 she braces it loosely that the honour of manhood 
fails. Know you not those lovely lines — I would 
they were learned by all youthful ladies of Eng- 
land — 

" Ah, wasteful woman! — she who may 
ID On her sweet self set her own price, 

Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 

How has she cheapen'd Paradise! 

How given for nought her priceless gift. 

How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine, 
15 Which, spent with due respective thrift, 

Had made brutes men, and men divine! "* 

66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations 
of lovers I believe you will accept. But what we 
too often doubt is the fitness of the continuance of 

20 such a relation throughout the whole of human life. 
We think it right in the lover and mistress, not in 
the husband and wife. That is to say, we think 
that a reverent and tender duty is due to one whose 
afifection we still doubt, and whose character we as 

25 yet do but partially and distantly discern; and that 
this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn, when 

♦ Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or 

too carefully; as far as I know, he is the only living poet 

who always strengthens and purifies; the others some- 

30 times darken and nearly always depress, and discourage 

the imagination they deeply seize. 



82 SESAME AND LILIES. 

the affection has become wholly and limitlessly our 
own, and the character has been so sifted and tried 
that we fear not to entrust it with the happiness of 
our lives. Do you not see how ignoble this is, as 
well as how unreasonable? Do you not feel that 5 
marriage,— when it is marriage at all, — is only the 
seal which marks the vowed transition of temporary 
into untiring service, and of fitful into eternal love? 

67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this 
guiding function of the woman reconcilable with a 10 
true wifely subjection? Simply in that it is a guid- 
ing, not a determining, function. Let me try to 
s'how you briefly how these powers seem to be 
rightly distinguishable. 

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in 15 
speaking of the " superiority " of one sex to the 
other, as if they could be compared in similar 
things. Each has what the other has not: each 
completes the other, and is completed by the other: 
they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and 20 
perfection of both depends on each asking and 
receiving from the other what the other only can 
give. 

68. Now their separate characters are briefly 
these. The man's power is active, progressive, de- 25 
fensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the 
discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for specu- 
lation and invention: his energy for adventure, for 
war, and for conquest wherever war is just, wher- 
ever conquest necessary. But the woman's power 30 
is for rule, not for battle, — and her intellect is not 



OF QUEENS' GARDEl^S. H 

for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, 
arrangement, and decision. She sees the quahties 
of things, their claims, and their places. Her great 
function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but 

5 infallibly adjudges the crown of contest. By her 
office, and place, she is protected from all danger 
and temptation. The man, in his rough work in 
the open world, must encounter all peril and trial : 
—to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, 

lothe inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or 
subdued; often misled; and ahvays hardened. But 
he guards the woman from all this; within his 
house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought 
it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of 

15 error or offence. This is the true nature of home 
—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from 
all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. 
In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far 
as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, 

20 and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, 
or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by 
either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it 
ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that 
outer world which you have roofed over, and 

25 lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a 
vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over 
by Household Gods, before whose faces none may 
come but those whom they can receive with love,— 
so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only 

30 of a nobler shade and light,— shade as of the rock 
in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the 



84 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Stormy sea; — so far it vindicates the name, and ful- 
fils the praise, of Home. 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is 
always round her. The stars only may be over her 
head; the glowworm in the night-cold grass may 5 
be the only lire at her foot: but home is yet wher- 
ever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far 
round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted 
with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for 
those who else were homeless. 10 

69. This, then, I believe to be, — will you not ad- 
mit it to be? — the woman's true place and power. 
But do not you see that, to fulfil this, she must — 
as far as one can use such terms of a human crea- 
ture — be incapable of error? So far as she rules, 15 
all must be right, or nothing is. She must be en- 
duringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infalli- 
bly wise — wise, not for self-development, but for 
self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself 
above her husband, but that she may never fail from 20 
his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent 
and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentle- 
ness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely ap- 
plicable, modesty of service — the true changeful- 
ness of woman. In that great sense — " La donna 25 
e mobile," not '' Qual pium' al vento "; no, nor yet 

" Variable as the shade, by the light quivering 
aspen made " ; but variable as the light, manifold 
in fair and serene division, that it may take the 
colour of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 30 

70. II. I have been trying, thus far, to show you 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 85 

what should be the place, and what the power, of 
woman. Now, secondly, we ask. What kind of 
education is to fit her for these? 

And if you indeed think this a true conception of 

5 her office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace 
the course of education which would fit her for the 
one, and raise her to the other. 

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful per- 
sons now doubt this, — is to secure for her such 

10 physical training and exercise as may confirm her 
health, and perfect her beauty; the highest refine- 
ment of that beauty being unattainable without 
splendour of activity and of delicate strength. To 
perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power; it 

15 cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light 
too far: only remember that all physical freedom is 
vain to produce beauty without a corresponding 
freedom of heart. There are two passages of that 
poet who is distinguished, it seems to me, from all 

20 others — not by power, but by exquisite jHghtness — 
which point you to the source, and describe to you, 
in a few syllables, the completion of womanly 
beauty. I will read the introductory stanzas, but 
the last is the one I wish you specially to notice: — 

25 " Three years she grew in sun and shower, 

Then Nature said, ' A lovelier flower 

' On earth was never sown; 
' This child I to myself will take; 
' She shall be mine, and 1 will make 

30 ' A lady of my own. 

** ' Myself will to my darling be 

' Both law and impulse; and with me 



86 SESAME AND LILIES. 

' The girl, in rock and plain, 
' In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
' Shall feel an overseeing power 

* To kindle, or restrain. 

" ' The floating clouds their state shall lend 5 

' To her, for her the willow bend; 

' Nor shall she fail to see 
' Even in the motions of the storm, 

* Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

* By silent sympathy. 10 

" * And vital feelings of delight 

' Shall rear her form to stately height, — 

* Her virgin bosom swell. 

* Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 

* While she and I together live, 15 

' Here in this happy dell.' "* 

" Vital feeling of delight," observe. There are 
deadly feelings of delight; but the natural ones are 
vital, necessary to very life. 

And they must be feelings of delight, if they are 20 
to be vital. Do not think you can make a girl 
lovely, if you do not make her happy. There is not 
one restraint you put on a good girl's nature — there 
is not one check you give to her instincts of affec- 
tion or of effort — which will not be indelibly written 25 
on her features, with a hardness which is all the 
more painful because it takes away the brightness 
from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the 
brow of virtue. 

* Observe, it is " Nature " who is speaking throughout, 30 
and who says, " while she and I together live." 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 87 

71. This for the means: now note the end. Take 
from the same poet, in two hnes, a perfect descrip- 
tion of womanly beauty — 

" A countenance in which did meet 
5 Sweet records, promises as sweet," 

The perfect loveHness of a woman's countenance 
can only consist in that majestic peace which is 
founded in memory of happy aiid useful years, — full 
of sweet records; and from the joining of this with 

10 that yet more majestic childishness, which is still 
full of change and promise; — opening always — 
modest at once, and bright, with hope of better 
things to be won, and to be bestowed. There is 
no old age where there is still that promise. 

15 y2. Thus, then, you have first to mould her physi- 
cal frame, and then, as the strength she gains will 
permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all 
knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its 
natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural 

20 tact of love. 

All such knowledge should be given her as may 
enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work 
of men: and yet it should be given, not as knowl- 
edge, — not as if it were, or could be, for her an 

25 object to know; but only to feel, and to judge. It 
is of no moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness 
in herself, whether she knows many languages or 
one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able 
to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand 

30 the sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no 



55 SESAME AND LILIES. 

moment to her own worth or dignity that she 
should be acquainted with this science or that; 
but it is of the highest that she should be 
trained in habits of accurate thought; that she 
should understand the meaning, the inevitable- 5 
ness, and the loveliness of natural laws; and follow 
at least some one path of scientific attainment, as 
far as to the threshold of that bitter Valley of Hu- 
miliation, into which only the wisest and bravest 
of men can descend, owning themselves for ever 10 
children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. 
It is of little consequence how many positions of 
cities she knows, or how many dates of events, or 
names of celebrated persons — it is not the object of 
education to turn the woman into a dictionary; but 15 
it is deeply necessary that she should be taught to 
enter with her whole personality into the history 
she reads; to picture the passages of it vitally in 
her own bright imagination; to apprehend, with 
her fine instincts, the pathetic circumstances and 20 
dramatic relations, which the historian too often 
only eclipses by his reasoning, and disconnects by 
his arrangement: it is for her to trace the hidden 
equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through 
the darkness, of the fateful threads of woven fire 25 
that connect error with retribution. But, chiefly of 
all, she is to be taught to extend the limits of her 
sympathy with respect to that history which is be- 
ing for ever determined as the moments pass in 
which she draws her peaceful breath ; and to the 30 
contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 89 

mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. 
She is to exercise herself in imagining what would 
be the effects upon her mind and conduct, if she 
were daily brought into the presence of the sufifer- 
5 ing which is not the less real because shut from 
her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to under- 
stand the nothingness of the proportion which that 
little world in which she lives and loves, bears to 
the world in which God lives and loves; — and sol- 
10 emnly she is to be taught to strive that her thoughts 
of piety may not be feeble in proportion to the num- 
ber they embrace, nor her prayer more languid than 
it is for the momentary relief from pain of her hus- 
band or her child, when it is uttered for the multi- 
15 tudes of those who have none to love them, — and is, 
" for all who are desolate and oppressed." 

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concur- 
rence; perhaps you will not be with me in what I 
believe is most needful for me to say. There is one 
20 dangerous science for women — one which they 
7 must indeed beware how they profanely touch — 
\ J. that of theology. Strange, and miserably strange, 
J^ that while they are modest enough to doubt their 
"P powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences 
25 where every step is demonstrable and sure, they will 
plunge headlong, and without one thought of in- 
y competency, into that science in which the greatest 
men have trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, 
that they will complacently and pridefully bind up 
30 whatever vice or folly there is in them, whatever 
A arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehensive- 



c 



1 






90 SESAME AND LILIES. 

ness, into one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. 
Strange in creatures born to be Love visible, that 
where they can know least, they will condemn first, 
and think to recommend themselves to their. Mas- 
ter, by crawling up the steps of His judgment- 5 
throne, to divide it with Him. Strangest of all, that 
they should think they were led by the Spirit of the 
Comforter into habits of- mind which have become 
in them the unmixed elements of home discomfort; 
and that they dare to turn the Household Gods of 10 
Christianity into ugly idols of their own ;^spiritual 
dolls, for them to dress according to their caprice; 
and from which their husbands must turn away in 
grieved contempt, lest they should be shrieked at 
for breaking them. 15 

74. I believe, then, with this exception, that a 
girl's education should be nearly, in its course and 
material of study, the same as a boy's; but quite 
differently directed. A woman, in any rank of life, 
ought to know whatever her husband is likely to 20 
know, but to know it in a diliferent way. His com- 
mand of it should be foundational and progressive; 
hers, general and accomplished for daily and help- 
ful use. Not but that it would often be wiser in 
men to learn things in a womanly sort of way, for 25 
present use, and to seek for the discipline and train- 
ing of their mental powers in such branches of study 
as will be afterwards fitted for social service; but, 
speaking broadly, a man ought to know any lan- 
guage or science he learns, thoroughly — while a 30 
woman ought to know the same language, or 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 9 1 

science, only so far as may enable her to sympathise 
in her husband's pleasures, and in those of his best 
friends. 

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far 
5 as she reaches. There is a wide difference between 

elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge 
— between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt 
at compassing. A woman may always help her 
husband by what she knows, however little; by 

10 what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only 
tease him. 

And indeed, if there were to be any difference 
between a girl's education and a boy's, I should 
say that of the two the girl should be earlier led, 

15 as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious 
subjects: and that her range of literature should be, 
not more, but less frivolous; calculated to add the 
qualities of patience and seriousness to her natural 
poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and 

20 also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of 
thought. I enter not now into any question of 
choice of books; only let us be sure that her books 
are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the 
package of the circulating library, wet with the last 

25 and lightiest spray of the fountain of folly. 

76. Or even of the fountain of wit; for with re- 
spect to the sore temptation of novel reading, it is 
not the badness of a novel that we should dread, 
so much as its overwrought interest. Tlie weakest 

30 romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of 
religious exciting literature, and the worst romance 



92 SESAME AND LILIES 

is not SO corrupting as false history, false philos- 
ophy, or false political essays. But the best ro- 
mance becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it 
renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, 
and increases the morbid thirst for useless acquaint- 5 
ance with scenes in which we shall never be called 
upon to act. 

yy. I speak therefore of good novels only; and 
our modern literature is particularly rich in types 
of such. Well read, indeed, these books have seri- 10 
ous use, being nothing less than treatises on moral 
anatomy and chemistry; studies of human nature in 
the elements of it. But I attach little weight to 
this function; they are hardly ever read with ear- 
nestness enough to permit them to fulfil it. The ut- 15 
most they usually do is to enlarge somewhat the 
charity of a kind reader, or the bitterness of a ma- 
licious one; for each will gather, from the novel, 
food for her own disposition. Those who are nat- 
urally proud and envious will learn from Thackeray 20 
to despise humanity; those who are naturally gentle, 
to pity it; those who are naturally shallow, to laugh 
at it. So, also, there might be a serviceable power 
in novels to bring before us, in vividness, a human 
truth which we had before dimly conceived; but 25 
the temptation to picturesqueness of statement is so 
great, that often the best writers of fiction cannot 
resist it; and our views are rendered so violent and 
one-sided, that their vitality is rather a harm than 
good. 30 

78. Without, however, venturing here on any at- 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 93 

tempt at decision how much novel reading should 
be allowed, let me at least clearly assert this, that 
whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they 
should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, 
5 but for their possession of good. The chance and 
scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or 
hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm 
to a noble girl; but the emptiness of an author op- 
presses her, and his amiable folly degrades her. 
10 And if she can have access to a good library of old 
and classical books, there need be no choosing at 
all. Keep the modern magazine and novel out of 
your girl's way ; turn her loose into the old library 
every wet day, and let her alone. She will find what 
15 is good for her; you cannot; for there is just this 
difference between the making of a girl's character 
and a boy's — you may chisel a boy into shape, as 
you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of 
a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But 
20 you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She 
grows as a flower does, — she will wither ' without 
sun; she will decay in her sheath, as a narcissus will, 
if you do not give her air enough; she may fall, 
and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without 
25 help at some moments of her life ; but you cannot 
fetter her; she must take her own fair form and 
way, if she take any, and in mind as in body, must 
have always. 

" Her household motions light and free, 
30 And steps of virgin liberty." 



94 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Let her loose in the Hbrary, I say, as you do a fawn 
in the field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times 
better than you; and the good ones too, and will 
eat some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which 
you had not the slightest thought would have 5 
been so. 

79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before 
her, and let her practice in all accomplishments be 
accurate and thorough, so as to enable her to un- 
derstand more than she accomplishes. I say the 10 
finest models — that is to say, the truest, simplest, 
usefullest. Note those epithets; they will range 
through all the arts. Try them in music, where you 
might think them the least applicable. I say the 
truest, that in which the notes most closely and 15 
faithfully express the meaning of the words, or the 
character of intended emotion; again, the simplest, 
that in which the meaning and melody are attained 
with the fewest and most significant notes possible; 
and, finally, the usefullest, that music which makes 20 
the best words most beautiful, which enchants them 
in our memories each w4th its own glory of sound, 
and w^hich applies them closest to the heart at the 
moment we need them. 

80. And not only in the material and in the 25 
course, but yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, 
let a girl's education be as serious as a bay's. You 
bring up your girls as if they were meant for side- 
board ornaments, and then complain of their frivol- 
ity. Give them the same advantages that you give 30 
their brothers — appeal to the same grand instincts 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 95 

of virtue in them; teach them, also, that courage 
and truth are the pillars of their being: — do you 
think that they would not answer that appeal, brave 
and true as they are even now, when you know 
5 that there is hardly a girls' school in this Christian 
kingdom where the children's courage or sincerity 
would be thought of half so much importance as 
their way of coming in at a door; and when the 
whole system of society, as respects the mode of 

lo establishing them in life, is one rotten plague of 
cowardice and imposture — cowardice, in not daring 
to let them live, or love, except as their neighbours 
choose; an imposture, in bringing, for the purposes 
of our own pride, the full glow of the world's worst 

15 vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when 
the whole happiness of her future existence depends 
upon her remaining undazzled? 

81. And give them, lastly, not only noble teach- 
ings, but noble teachers. You consider somewhat, 

20 before you send your boy to school, what kind of 
a man the master is; — whatsoever kind of man he 
is, you at least give him full authority over your 
son, and show some respect to him yourself: — if he 
comes to dine with you, you do not put him at a 

25 side table: you know also that, at college, your 
child's immediate tutor will be under the direction 
of some still higher tutor, for whom you have abso- 
lute reverence. You do not treat the Dean of 
Christ Church or the Master of Trinity as your 

30 inferiors. 

But what teachers do you give your girls, and 



g6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

what reverence do you show to the teachers you 
have chosen? Is a girl Hkely to think her own con- 
duct, or her own intellect, of much importance, 
when you trust the entire formation of her char- 
acter, moral and intellectual, to a person whom you 5 
let your servants treat with less respect than they 
do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your child 
were a less charge than jams and groceries), and 
whom you yourself think you confer an honour 
upon by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing- 10 
room in the evening? 

82. Thus, then, of literature as her help and thus 
of art. There is one more help which she cannot 
do without — one which, alone, has sometimes done 
more than all other influences besides, — the help 15 
of wild and fair nature. Hear this of the education 
of Joan of Arc : — 

"The education of this poor girl was mean, according 
to the present standard; was ineffably grand, according 
to a purer philosophical standard; and only not good for 20 
our age, because for us it would be unattainable. . . . 

" Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most 
to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of ' 
Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and 
it was haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish 25 
priest {curd) was obliged to read mass there once a year, 
in order to keep them in decent bounds. . . . 

" But the forests of Domremy— those were the glories 
of the land; for in them abode mysterious powers and 
ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. Abbeys 30 
there were, and abbey windows, — ' like Moorish temples 
of the Hindoos,' — that exercised even princely power both 
in Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 97 

sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at 
matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few 
enough, and scattered enough were these abbeys, so as 
in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; 
5 yet many enough to spread a network or awning of 
Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a 
heathen wilderness."* 

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, 
woods eighteen miles deep to the centre; btit you 

10 can, perhaps, keep a fairy or two for your children 
yet, if you wish to keep them. But do you wish 
it? Suppose you had each, at the back of your 
houses, a garden, large enough for your children to 
play in, with just as much lawn as would give them 

15 room to run,— no more — and that you could not 
change your abode; but that, if you chose, you 
could double your income, or quadruple it, by dig- 
ging a coal shaft in the middle of the lawn, and 
turning the flower-beds into heaps of coke. Would 

20 you do it? I hope not. I can tell you, you would 
be wrong if you did, though it gave you income 
sixty-fold instead of four-fold. 

83. Yet this is what you are doing with all Eng- 
land. The whole country is but a little garden, not 

25 more than enough for your children to run on the 
lawns of, if you would let them all run there. And 
this little garden you will turn into furnace ground, 
and fill with heaps of cinders, if you can ; and those 
children of yours, not you, will suffer for it. For 

30 *" Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's ' History 
of France.' "-De Quincey's Works, vol. iii., p. 217. 



9^ SESAME AND LILIES. 

the fairies will not be all banished; there are fairies 
of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gift 
seems to be "sharp arrows of the mighty"; but 
their last gifts are " coals of juniper." 

84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part 5 
of my subject that I feel more — press this upon 
you; for we made so little use of the power of na- 
ture while we had it that we shall hardly feel what 
we have lost. Just on the other side of the Mersey 
you have your Snowdon, and your Menai Straits, 10 
and that mighty granite rock beyond the moors of 
Anglesea, splendid in its heathery crest, and foot 
planted in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred — 

a divine promontory, looking westward; the Holy 
Head or Headland, still not without awe when its 15 
red light glares first through storm. These are the 
hills, and these the bays and blue inlets, which, 
among the Greeks, would have been always loved, 
always fateful in influence on the national mind. 
That Snowdon is your Parnassus ; but where are its 20 
Muses? That Holyhead mountain is your Island of 
yEgina; but where is its Temple to Minerva? 

85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva 
had achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus 
up to the year 1848? — Here is a little account of a 25 
Welsh school, from page 261 of the Report on 
Wales, published by the Committee of Council on 
Education. This is a school close to a town con- 
taining five thousand persons: — 

" I then called up a larger class, most of whom had 30 
recently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly de- 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 99 

clared they had never heard of Christ, and two that they 
had never heard of God. Two out of six thought Christ 
was on earth now " (they might have had a worse thought 
perhaps), "three knew nothing about the Crucifixion. 
5 Four out of seven did not know the names of the months 
nor the number of days in a year. They had no addition; 
beyond two and two, or three and three, their minds were 
perfect blanks." 

Oh, ye women of England! from the Princess 

lo of that Wales to the simplest of you, do not think 
your own children can be brought into their true 
fold of rest, while these are scattered on the hills, 
as sheep having no shepherd. And do not think 
your daughters can be trained to the truth of their 

15 own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which 
God made at once for their school-room and their 
play-ground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot 
baptize them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of 
yours, unless you baptize them also in the sweet 

20 waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth for 
ever from the " rocks of your native land — waters 
which a Pagan would have worshipped in their 
purity, and you worship only with pollution. You 
cannot lead your children faithfully to those narrow 

25 axe-hewn church altars of yours, while the dark 
azure altars in heaven — the mountains that sustain 
your island throne, — mountains on which a Pagan 
would have seen the powers of heaven rest in every 
wreathed cloud — remain for you without inscrip- 

sotion; altars built, not to, but by an Unknown God. 

86. III. Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far 

of the teaching, of woman, and thus of her house- 
L.of C. 



lOO SESAME AXD LILIES. 

hold office, and queenliness. W'e come now to our 
last, our widest question, — What is her queenly of- 
fice with respect to the state? 

Generally, we are under an impression that a 
man's duties are public, and a woman's private. 5 
But this is not altogether so. A man has a personal 
work or duty, relating to his own home, and a 
public work or duty, which is the expansion of the 
other, relating to the state. So a woman has a 
personal work or duty, relating to her own home, 10 
and a public work or duty, which is also the ex- 
pansion of that. 

Now, the man's work for his own home is, as 
has been said, to secure its maintenance, progress, 
and defence: the woman's to secure its order, com- 15 
fort, and loveliness. 

Expand both these functions. The man's duty, 
as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the 
maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of the 
state. The woman's duty, as a member of the com- 20 
monwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the com- 
forting, and in the beautiful adornment of the state. 

What the man is at his own gate, defending it, 
if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in 
a less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to be 25 
at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need 
be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent 
work there. 

And. in like manner, what the woman is to be 
within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm 30 
of distress, and the mirror of beautv: that she is 



OF QUEENS' GARDE XS. lOI 

also to be without her gates, where order is more 
difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more 
rare. 

And as within the human heart there is always 

5 set an instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct 
which you cannot quench, but only warp and cor- 
rupt if you withdraw it from its true purpose: — as 
there is the intense instinct of love, which, rightly 
disciplined, maintains all the sanctities of life, and, 

10 misdirected, undermines them; and must do either 
the one or the other; — so there is in the human 
heart an inextinguishable instinct, the love of 
power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the 
majesty of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks 

15 them. 

87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart 
of man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, 
and God keeps it there. \'ainly, as falsely, you 
blame or rebuke the desire of power! — For Heav- 

20 en's sake, and for ]\Ian's sake, desire it all you can. 
But i^'hat power? That is all the question. Power 
to destroy? the lion's limb, and the dragon's breath? 
Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, and to 
guard. Power of the sceptre and shield; the power 

25 of the royal hand that heals in touching, — that binds 
the fiend, and looses the captive; the throne that is 
founded on the rock of Justice, and descended from 
only by steps of ^lercy. \\\\\ you not covet such 
power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be 

30 no more housewives, but queens? 

88. It is now long since the women of England 



102 SESAME AND LILIES. 

arrogated, universally, a title which once belonged 
to nobility only; and, having once been in the habit 
of accepting the simple title of gentlewoman, as 
correspondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the 
privilege of assuming the title of '* Lady," * which 5 
properly corresponds only to the title of " Lord." 

I do not blame them for this; but only for their 
narrow motive in this. I would have them desire 
and claim the title of Lady, provided they claim, 
not merely the title, but the office and duty sig- 10 
nified by it. Lady means " bread-giver " or '' loaf- 
giver," and Lord means '* maintainer of laws," and 
both titles have reference, not to the law which is 
maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is 
given to the household; but to law maintained for 15 
the multitude, and to bread broken among the 
multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to 
his title in so far as he is the maintainer of the jus- 
tice of the Lord of Lords; and a Lady has legal 
claim to her title, only so far as she communicates 20 
that help to the poor representatives of her Master, 
which women once, ministering to Him of their 

* I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for 
our English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and 
girl should receive, at a given age, their knighthood and 25 
ladyhood by true title; attainable only by certain proba- 
tion and trial both of character and accomplishment; and 
to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dis- 
honourable act. Such an institution would be entirely, and 
with all noble results, possible, in a nation which loved 30 
honour. That it would not be possible among us, is not to 
the discredit of the scheme. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 103 

substance, were permitted to extend to that Master 
Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself 
once was, in breaking of bread. 

89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this 
5 power of the Dominus, or House-Lord, and of the 

Domina, or House-Lady, is great and venerable, 
not in the number of those through whom it has 
lineally descended, but in the number of those 
whom it grasps within its sway; it is always re- 

10 garded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty 
is founded on its duty, and its ambition correlative 
with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with 
the thought of being noble ladies, with a train of 
vassals? Be it so; you cannot be too noble, and 

15 your train cannot be too great; but see to it that 
your train is of vassals whom you serve and feed, 
not merely of slaves who serve and feed yon; and 
that the multitude which obeys you is of those 
whom you have comforted, not oppressed, — whom 

20 you have redeemed, not led into captivity. 

90. And this, which is true of the lower or 
household dominion, is equally true of the queenly 
dominion; — that highest dignity is open to you, 
if you will also accept that highest duty. Rex 

25 et Regina — Roi et Reine — '' Right-doers "; they dif- 
fer but from the Lady and Lord, in that their power 
is supreme over the mind as over the person — that 
they not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. 
And whether consciously or not, you must be, in 

30 many a heart, enthroned: there is no putting by 
that crown; queens you must always be; queens tQ 



I04 SESAME AND LILIES. 

your lovers; queens to your husbands and your 
sons; queens of higher mystery to the world be- 
yond, which bows itself, and will for ever bow, be- 
fore the myrtle crown, and the stainless sceptre of 
womanhood. But, alas! you are too often idle and 5 
careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least 
things, while you abdicate it in the greatest; and 
leaving misrule and violence to work their will 
among men, in defiance of the power which, hold- 
ing straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace, lo 
the wicked among you betray, and the good forget. 
91. " Prince of Peace." Note that name. When 
kings rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges 
of the earth, they also, in their narrow place, and 
mortal measure, receive the power of it. There are 15 
no other rulers than they: other rule than theirs is 
but 7;2wrule; they who govern verily " Dei gratia" 
are all princes, yes, or princesses, of Peace. There 
is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but 
you women are answerable for it; not in that you 20 
have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. 
Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they will 
fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to 
choose their cause for them, and to forbid them 
when there is no cause. There is no suffering, no 25 
injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it 
lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you 
should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it 
down without sympathy in their own struggle; but 
men are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in 30 
hope ; it is you only who can feel the depths of pain, 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 105 

and conceive the way of its healing. Instead of 
trying to do this, you turn away from it; you shut 
yourselves within your park walls and garden 
gates; and you are content to know that there is 
5 beyond them a whole world in wilderness — a world 
of secrets which you dare not penetrate, and of suf- 
fering which you dare not conceive. 

92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most 
amazing among the phenomena of humanity. I am 

10 surprised at no depths to which, when once warped 
from its honour, that humanity can be degraded. I 
do not wonder at the miser's death, with his hands, 
as they relax, dropping gold. I do not wonder at 
the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped about 

15 his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed 
murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in 
fhe darkness of the railway, or reed-shadow of the 
marsh. I do not even wonder at the myriad-handed 
murder of multitudes, done boastfully in the day- 

20 light, by the frenzy of nations, and the immeasura- 
ble, unimaginable guilt, heaped up from hell to 
heaven, of their priests, and kings. But this is won- 
derful to me — oh, how wonderful! — to see the ten- 
der and delicate woman among you, with her child 

25 at her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, 
over it, and over its father, purer than the air of 
heaven, and stronger than the seas of earth — nay, 
a magnitude of blessing which her husband would 
not part with for all that earth itself, though it were 

30 made of one entire and perfect chrysolite: — to see 
her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with 



Io6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

her next-door neighbour! This is wonderful — oh, 
wonderful! — to see her, with every innocent feel- 
ing fresh within her, go out in the morning into her 
garden to play with the fringes of its guarded 
flowers, and lift their heads when they are droop- 5 
ing, with her happy smile upon her face, and no 
cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall 
around her place of peace; and yet she knows, in 
her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, 
that, outside of that little rose-covered wall, the 10 
wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony 
of men, and beat level by the drift of their life- 
blood. 

93. Have you ever considered what a deep under 
meaning there lies, or at least may be read, if we 15 
choose, in our custom of strewing flowers before 
those whom we think most happy? Do you sup- 
pose it is merely to deceive them into the hope that 
happiness is always to fall thus in showers at their 
feet? — that wherever they pass they will tread on 20 
herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground 
will be made smooth for them by depth of roses? 
So surely as they believe that, they will have, in- 
stead, to walk on bitter herbs and thorns; and the 
only softness to their feet will be of snow. But it 25 
is not thus intended they should believe; there is a 
better meaning in that old custom. The path of 
a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers ; but 
they rise behind her steps, not before them. '' Her 
feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies ^o 
rosy." 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 1 07 

94. You think that only a lover's fancy; — false 
and vain! How if it could be true? You think 
this also, perhaps, only a poet's fancy — 

" Even the light harebell raised its head 
5 Elastic from her airy tread." 

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does 
not destroy where she passes. She should revive; 
the harebells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. 
You think I am rushing into wild hyperbole? Par- 

10 don me, not a whit — I mean what I say in calm 
English, spoken in resolute truth. You have heard 
it said — (and I believe there is more than fancy 
even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) 
— that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden 

15 of some one who loves them. I know you would 
like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant 
magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter 
bloom by a kind look upon them: nay, more, if your 
look had the power, not only to cheer, but to 

20 guard; — if you could bid the black blight turn 
away, and the knotted caterpillar spare — if you 
could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, 
and say to the south wind, in frost — '* Come, thou 
south, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices 

25 of it may flow out." This you would think a great 
thing? And do you think it not a greater thing, 
that all this, (and how much more than this!) you 
can do, for fairer flowers than these — flowers that 
could bless you for having blessed them, and will 

30 love you for having loved them ; — flowers that have 



io8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

thoughts Hke yours, and Hves Hke yours; and 
which, once saved, you save for ever? Is this only 
a httle power? Far among the moorlands and the 
rocks, — far in the darkness of the terrible streets, — 
these feeble florets are lying, with all their fresh 5 
leaves torn, and their stems broken — will you never 
go down to them, nor set them in order in their 
little fragrant beds, nor fence them, in their trem- 
bling, from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow 
morning, for you, but not for them; and the dawn 10 
rise to watch, far away, those frantic Dances of 
Death ; "^ but no dawn rise to breathe upon these 
living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and rose; 
nor call to you, through your casement, — call (not 
giving you the name of the English poet's lady, 15 
but the name of Dante's great Matilda, who on the 
edge of happy Lethe, stood, wreathing flowers with 
flowers), saying, — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 

For the black bat, night, has flown, 20 

And the woodbine spices are w-afted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown " ? 

Will you not go down among them? — among 
those sweet living things, whose new courage, 
sprung from the earth with the deep colour of 25 
heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of goodly 
spire; and whose purity, washed from the dust, is 
opening, bud by bud, into the flower of promise; — 
and still they turn to you and for you, " The 

*See note, p. 48, 30 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 109 

Larkspur listens— I hear, I hear! And the Lily 
whispers — I wait." 

95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when 
I read you that first stanza; and think that I had 
5 forgotten them? Hear them now:— 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown. 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

10 Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of 
this sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you? Did 
you ever hear, not of a Maud, but a Madeleine, who 
went down to her garden in the dawn, and found 
One waiting at the gate, whom she supposed to be 

15 the gardener? Have you not sought Him often; 
sought Him in vain, all through the night; sought 
Him in vain at the gate of that old garden where 
the fiery sword is set? He is never there; but at 
the gate of this garden He is waiting always— wait- 

20 ing to take your hand — ready to go down to see 
the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine has 
flourished, and the pomegranate budded. There 
you shall see with Him the little tendrils of the vines 
that His hand is guiding— there you shall see the 

25 pomegranate springing where His hand cast the 
sanguine seed; — more: you shall see the troops of 
the angel keepers that, with their wings, wave away 
the hungry birds from the pathsides where He has 
sown, and call to each other between the vineyard 

30 rows, " Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil 



no SESAME AND LILIES. 

the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." Oh 
— you queens — you queens; among the hills and 
happy greenwood of this land of yours, shall the 
foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests ; 
and in your cities shall the stones cry out against 
you, that they are the only pillows where the Son of 
Man can lay His head? 



NOTES. 

SESAME. 

OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 

I : Title. — Sesame. , 'Open Sesame' is the magic pass-word 
which opens the treasure-cave in the story of The Forty Thieves 
in the Arabian Nights. For its significance as the title of the lec- 
ture cf. 62 : 22. The sesame is an Arabian plant, of which the 
seeds are used for food. 

I : Title. — Kings' Treasuries. In Ezra 5 : 17 we find the phrase 
'king's treasure-house ' used for the archives in which the records 
of Darius' kingdom are kept. 

1 : Motto. — Lucian. A Greek essay-writer and satirist of the 
second century A.D. The Fisher matt is a dialogue between Lucian 
and the great philosophers of Greece in which philosophy itself 
becomes the object of satire. At the end of the satire Lucian baits 
his hook with a fig and a gold coin, and, seated on the wall of the 
Acropolis, fishes for the gluttons of the city. Hence the title. 
{Encyc. Brit., s. v, Lucian.) 

2: 12. — Some connection with schools. Because of his father's 
generosity Ruskin had been made life-governor of various schools, 
among them the famous Christ's Hospital in London. In 1854 he 
was interested in the founding of the Working Men's College in 
London, where he gave instruction in drawing. He was not made 
professor at Oxford till 1870. 

2 : 27. — Double-belled doors. With two bells, one for visitors, 
one for business callers. 

Ill 



112 NOTES. [3:27 

3 : 27. — The last infirmity of noble minds. Milton, Lycidas 71 : 

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 

(That last infirmity of noble mind) 

To scorn delights and live laborious days. 

Ruskin's quotation is slightly inaccurate. ' Last infirmity 
means that the desire for fame is the weakness hardest for wise 
men to put off. 

4 : 24. — My Lord. Bishops of the Cnurch of England have the 
rank of barons with a seat in the House of Lords, and are addressed 
as * my lord.' 

5: 18. — My writings on Political Economy. See Introduction. 

II : 30. — Note. The paragraph referred to is as follows: 

' First of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course 
art-gift and amiability of disposition are two different things. A 
good man is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for color 
necessarily imply an honest mind. But great art implies the 
union of both powers: it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a 
pure soul. If the gift is not there, we can have no art at all ; and 
if the soul — and a right soul too — is not there, the art is bad, how- 
ever dexterous.' 

This doctrine, which is of the greatest importance, not only for 
the understanding of this passage, but for an understanding of 
Ruskin's whole work, is further expanded in The Queen of the 
Air, § 102 : 

' The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and 
its virtues his virtues. 

' Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and 
mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish per- 
son builds foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly ; a virtuous one, 
beautifully ; and a vicious one, basely. If stone work is well put 
together, it means that a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful 
man cut it, and an honest man cemented it. If it has too much 
ornament, it means that its carver was too greedy of pleasure ; if 
too little, that he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the like. 
So that when once you have learned how to spell these most pre- 
cious of all legends, — pictures and buildings, — you may read the 
characters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a mirror; — nay. 



14 : I3-] NOTES. II3 

as in a microscope, and magnified a hundredfold ; for the character 
becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in alHts noblest 
or meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as 
under a scalpel, and in dissection ; for a man may hide himself to 
you, every other way ; but he cannot in his work : there, be sure, 
you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees,— all 
that he can do, — his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, 
his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. 
If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider ; if a 
honeycomb, by a bee ; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and 
a nest wreathed by a bird ; and a house built by a man, worthily, 
if he is worthy, and ignobly, if he is ignoble. 

'And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is 
good or bad. so is the maker of it.* 

12: 31.— Elysian gates. Elysium was the region of Hades in- 
habited by the souls of the great and good — philosophers, poets, 
heroes. Cf. 55 : 25. 

12 : 31. — No vile or vulgar person ever enters there. Cf. Car- 
lyle's similar thought : 

* A thoroughly immoral man could not know anything at all ! 
To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first 
love the thing, sympathize with it : that is be virtuously related to 
it. If he have not the justice to put down his selfishness at every 
turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, 
how shall he know ? ' Heroes and Hero- Worship, The Hero as 
Poet, p. 122, ed. Macmechan. 

13 : 2. — Faubourg St. Germain. The old aristocratic quarter of 
Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. 

14 : 13.— That cruel reticence. This doctrine of the intentional 
reserve of great artists is given at greater length in The Queen of 
the Air, § 17. Speaking of the Iliad, Ruskin says : 

'All pieces of such art are didactic in the purest way, indirectly 
and occultly, so that, first, you shall only be bettered by them if 
you are already hard at work in bettering yourself ; and when you 
are bettered by them, it shall be partly with a general acceptance 
of their influence, so constant and subtle that you shall be no more 
conscious of it than of the healthy digestion of food ; and partly 
by a gift of unexpected truth, which you shall only find by slow 



114 NOTES. [i6 : 12. 

mining for it; — which is withheld on purpose, and close-locked, 
that you may not get it till you have forged the key of it in a 
furnace of your own heating. And this withholding of their mean- 
ing is continual, and confessed, in the great poets. Thus Pindar 
says of himself : "There is many an arrow in my quiver, full of 
speech to the wise, but, for the many, they need interpreters." 
And neither Pindar, nor ^schylus, nor Hesiod, nor Homer, nor 
any of the greater poets or teachers of any nation or time, ever 
spoke but with intentional reservation : nay, beyond this, there is 
often a meaning which they themselves cannot interpret, — which 
it may be for ages long after them to interpret, — in what they 
said, so far as it recorded true imaginative vision.' 

On the other side of the question we might adduce the fact that 
Browning, obscurest of modern poets, declared that he wrote as 
clearly as he could. 

16 : 12. — The peerage of words. A discriminating taste in liter- 
ary matters is, then, possible only to him who has some acquaint- 
ance with the history of the language. Why the word 'peerage'? 

17 : 14. — Masked words. Words which appear to bear a mean- 
ing they do not possess, or words capable of two interpretations. 
Such are the catch phrases of the campaign orator — * imperialism,' 
'freedom of the press,' etc. 

17 : 25. — Chamaeleon cloaks. Ruskin is giving free play to his 
fancy and indulging in an etymological pun. Chamaeleon (Greek 
Xccfxai, on the ground, + Xeoov;^ lion), means literally ' ground- 
lion.' The chamaeleon is a species of lizard which changes its 
color with the color of surrounding objects. These equivocal 
words wear a cloak or mask which changes color according to each 
man's fancy, and have the deadly power of a lion. 

17 : 31. — Unjust stewards. Luke 16 : 1-8. 

18 : 6. — Languages so mongrel in breed. Cf. 20 : 9. 

18 : 14. — The Form of the ' Word.' Cf. Aratra Pentelici, § 64. 

' The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imagina- 
tive faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, in 
what we chiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of Deity; 
and the apprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading 
the Book whose primal commands we refuse to obey. 

' No feather idol of Polynesia was ever sign of a more shameful 



20 : 6.] J^OT£S. 1I5 

idolatry than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the 
majority of English religious persons, that the Word of God, by 
which the heavens were of old, and the earth, standing out of the 
water and in the water. — the Word of God which came to the 
prophets, and comes still for ever to all who will hear it, (and to 
many who will forbear); and which, called Faithful and True, is 
to lead forth, in the judgment, the armies of heaven, — that this 
"Word of God" may yet be bound at our pleasure in morocco, 
and carried about in a young lady's pocket, with tasselled ribands to 
mark the passages she most approves of.' 

19 : 5. — Sown on any wayside. The language here and in the 
following lines is colored by memories of the parable of the sower, 
Matthew 13 : 3-8. 

19: 12. — Damno. Latin condemno — con -{- damno. English 
damn is used by Shakespeare in the sense of condemn : 

He shall not live; look with a spot I damn him. 

Julius C<esar, 4. i, 6. 

19: 27. — Countless as forest leaves. Cf. Milton's description of 
the fallen hosts of Satan, who lie 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
In Vallombrosa, where the Etruscan shades 
High over-arched embower. 

Paradise Lost^ i, 302-304. 

Cf. also Iliad, 6. 146-148. 

20 : 2. — Ecclesia. The Latin word is a transliteration of Greek 
€KKXr](Tia, an assembly of citizens. In the New Testament the 
word is used to denote the whole body of believing Christians. 
When people began to use the word to denote a definite organi- 
zation, such as the Roman hierarchy, the word became a 'masked 
word,' and ecclesiastics claimed for their organization the promises 
made by Christ to the whole body of believers. Hence many of 
the religious war". 

20 : 6. — Presbyter, Greek nfteafivzepo'-,, elder. The history of 
the word is parallel to that of ecclesia. The three words : priest, 
presbyter, and elder are etymologically equivalents. English /r?Vj/ 
< O. E. preost < Lat. presbyter, a transliteration of the Greek. 



Ii6 NOTES. [20:10. 

20: 10, — Saxon. By Saxon Ruskin means Old English (often 
called Anglo-Saxon), the language of the Beowulf and of King 
Alfred, spoken and written in England from the time of the Anglo- 
Saxon conquest till 1 100. It is hardly accurate to speak of it as 
one of the languages from which modern English is derived; it is 
rather the parent stock on which the other elements of our lan- 
guage have been grafted. King Alfred called his language 
' English.' 

20 : 25. — Max Miiller (1823-1900). A distinguished German 
scholar, professor of comparative philology at Oxford. The 
lectures referred to are Lectures on the Science of Language (1861- 
1864). 

21 : 14. — Lycidas. The passage quoted covers 11. 108-129 o^ ^^^e 
poem. The 'sage Hippotades' and the ' reverend sire ' Camus 
have just appeared to mourn the death of Lycidas (Milton's friend, 
Edward King). 

21 : 16. — Pilot. St. Peter, who was a fisherman on the Lake of 
Galilee. See Luke 5 : 3. 

21 : 18. — Amain. Firmly, with might. Cf. the phrase ' with 
might and main.' 

21 : 21. — Enow. Enough. 

21 : 29. — What recks it them. What do they care. Cf. reckless. 

21 : 29. — They are sped.. Are provided for. Cf. the phrase * to 
wish God speed.' 

21 : 30. — List. Please. Even this unsound instruction is given 
only when the false pastors please. 

21 : 30. — Lean and flashy. Cheaply ornamented to conceal the 
leanness of their matter. 

21 : 31. — Scrannel pipes. The word scrannel, of doubtful origin, 
and first used by Milton, seems to mean ' thin ' or ' meagre.' 
The harsh sound of the word is especially appropriate. 

22 : 9. — Milton was no Bishop-lover. Jerram, in his edition 
of Lycidas, has the following note to 1. 112 : 'It would be unfair 
to construe this admission of the mitre into a precise statement of 
Milton's religious views at this period. ... As St. Peter here 
speaks with episcopal authority, he is made to wear the distinctive 
dress of his order. ... In the Reason of Church Government, c. vi. 
(1641), Milton indeed uses very different language, when he speaks 



25:31.] NOTES. 117 

of " the haughty prelates with their forked mitres, the badge of 
schism " ; but the events of the three intervening years \Lycidas 
was published in 1638] had produced a considerable change in his 
attitude towards the clergy, or at least had emboldened him in the 
expression of opinions which had been long lurking in his mind.' 

22: II. — Power of the keys. The main .argument for the su- 
premacy of the Pope rests on Christ's words to St. Peter, Mat- 
thew 16 : 19 : ' And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven,' etc. 

24 : 2. — Lords over the heritage. See i Peter 5 : 2, 3, where 
the apostle (notice that it is St. Peter) exhorts the elders of the 
church to labor ' not for filthy lucre, but for a ready mind; neither 
as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the 
fiock.' 

24 : 9. — Broken metaphor. A 'mixed' metaphor, one in which 
two or more figures are confused. 

24 : 17.— A Bishop means a person who sees. The word * bishop ' 
(O.E. biscop)\s a corruption of L2k.X.\n episcopus, itself a transliter_ 
ation of Greek eTcicTKOTtoi, overseer. (Cf. ciKoTteoo and English 
' scope.') 

24 : 18. — Pastor. Latin pastor = shepherd, one who feeds. 
(Cf. pas cere.) 

25 : 9. — Bill and Nancy. Alluding to Bill Sikes, the burglar, and 
Nancy, his mistress, murdered by him, in Dickens' Oliver Twist. 
Bill Sikes is mentioned by Ruskin in The Queen of the Air, § 103. 
Dickens contributed with his fiction, as Ruskin and Carlyle with 
their essays, to a better understanding of the wretched conditions 
of the lower classes. 

25:15. — Salisbury steeple. The steeple of Salisbury Cathedral 
is the highest in England. 

25 : 31. — Note. The following sentences from Time and Tide 
are referred to: ' Putting, however, all question of forms and names 
aside, the thing actually needing to be done is this — that over 
every hundred (or some not much greater number) of the families 
composing a Christian State, there should be appointed an over- 
seer, or bishop, to render account, to the State, of the life of every 
individual in those families; and to have care both of their interest 
and conduct to such an extent as they may be willing to admit, or 



Il8 NOTES. [26: II. 

as their faults may justify; so that it may be impossible for any 
person, however humble, to suffer from unknown want, or live in 
unrecognized crimes.' 

26 : II. — Spirit. Latin spiritus (cf. spirare), breath, translates the 
Greek nvevua. The Greek of John 3 : 8 reads as follows : rJ 
Ttvevfia OTtov QeXei vti^eiy Kal Z7)v (pcovrjv avrov aKoveiS, 
dXX* ovK oida^ TtoBev epx^^^^^ ^<-'*-^ ^ou vTidyei • ovrooS 
eariv ndi 6 yeyevvr^^ei^oi, eK rod Trvevuaro^. 

27 : 4. — Cretinous, having the characteristics of a cretin, one of 
a species of deformed idiot found in certain parts of Switzerland. 

27 : 13.'— Word. The Brantwood edition reads 'work instead of 
act,' an obvious error. The earlier editions read ' word.' 

27 : 14. — Clouds, these, without water. Jude 12; said of false 
teachers. 

27 : 22. — Dante. The passage referred to is in Canto IX of the 
Purgatorio. Dante and Virgil are approaching the gate of Purga- 
tory. I quote Gary's translation: 

The lowest stair was marble white, so smooth 
And polished, that therein my mirrored form 
Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark 
Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block, 
Cracked lengthwise and across. The third, that lay 
Massy above, seemed porphyry, that fiamed 
Red as the life-blood spouting from a vein. 
On this God''s angel either foot sustained, 
Upon the threshold seated which appeared 
A rock of diamond. . . . 

Forth he drew 
Two keys of metal twain: the one was gold, 
Its fellow silver. With the pallid first. 
And next the burnished, he so plyed the gate 
As to content me well. 

The throe steps are interpreted as meaning respectively contri- 
tion, confession, and works of satisfaction, the steps by which one 
leaves sin and enters the Christian life. The golden key symbol- 
izes the divine authority of the priest; the silver, the wisdom he 
must possess. Read the whole canto. 

27 : 31. — Have taken away the key of knowledge. Christ's words 
to the lawyers, Lui^e 11 : 52. 



31 : 5-]' NOTES. II9 

28 : 5. — He that watereth. Proverbs 11 : 25. 

28 : 10. — Bound in heaven, ' Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth 
shall be bound in heaven.' Matthew 18 : 18. 

28 : 12. — Rock apostle. St. Peter. See Matthew 16 : 18. The 
Greek iter pa means ' rock.' 

28 : 13. — Take him, and bind him. Ruskin has in mind the 
command of the king to his servants in the parable of the great 
supper, ' Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast 
him into outer darkness.' Matthew ?2 : 13. 

30 : 19. — To mix the music with our thoughts. Adapted from 
Emerson's To Rhea (Poems, p. ig). When a god loves a mortal 
child 

'Tis his study and delight 
To bless that creature day and night ; 
From all evils to defend her ; 
In her lap to pour all splendor ; 
To ransack eanh for riches rare, 
And fetch her stars to deck her hair : 
He mixes music with her thoughts. 
And saddens her with heavenly doubts. 

31 : I. — The scene with the bishops. Richard III., 3, 7. The 
infamous Richard enters aloft with a prayer-book in his hand, a 
bishop on either side of him. The bishops seem to be willing par- 
takers in Richard's hypocrisy. 

31 : 2.— Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury under 
Henry VIII. He is depicted in the drama as a man of noblest 
character. See Henry VIII., Act V. Ruskin's example is an un- 
fortunate one, since the play is now believed to be only in part 
Shakespeare's. The scenes in which Cranmer figures were prob- 
ably written by Fletcher. 

31 : 3. — St. Francis and St. Dominic. (Early thirteenth century.) 
Dante describes them in Cantos XI and XII of the Paradiso with 
the greatest reverence and admiration. They were the founders 
of the Franciscan and Dominican orders of monks. 

31 : 4, 5. ' Disteso, tanto vilmente nell' eterno esilio.' ' Stretched 
out so vilely in eternal exile.' Caiaphas, the high priest who 
counseled the crucifixion of Christ (John 11 : 49-51). Dante repre- 
sents him as crucified with three stakes to the ground {Inferno, 



I20 NOTES. [31^6. 

23, III). Again Ruskin's example is unfortunate. That Dante 
should so represent the Jew Caiaphas seems to have no bearing on 
his opinion of bishops. 

31 ; 6. — 'Come '1 frate che confessa lo perfido assassin.' 'Like 
the friar who confesses the perfidious assassin.' Dante finds Pope 
Nicholas III. (1277-1280) suffering the penalty of the sin of simony 
(selling ecclesiastical preferment). He is head downwards in the 
rock, only his feet protruding from the hole, and the soles of his 
feet on fire. Dante speaks to him as a friar would speak to an as- 
sassin, receiving his last confession, before he was buried alive, 
head-downwards — a not uncommon punishment in Dante's time. 

32 : I. — Break up your fallow ground. Jeremiah 4 : 3. 

32 : 9. — Passion. Ruskin uses the word as about equivalent to 
'intensity of feeling.' Its original meaning is 'suffering' (Latin 
patior). Cf. the clause in the Litany of the English Church: ' By 
thy cross and passion. Good Lord, deliver us.' Cf. also note on 

45 : 25. 

33 : I. — The essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. 
Cf. ' VVe may conclude that vulgarity consists in a deadness of the 
heart and body, . . . — gentlemanliness being another word for an 
intense humanity. And vulgarity shows itself primarily in dulness 
of heart, not in rage or cruelty, but in inability to feel or conceive 
noble character or emotion . . . The term "deathful selfishness" 
will embrace all the most fatal and essential forms of mental vul- 
garity.' Modern Painters, V, Part IX, Chap. VII, §§23, 24. 

33:15. — Mimosa. The mimosa sensiiiva or 'sensitive plant.' 
Its leaves shrink when touched. 

34 : 17. — The great river beyond the sand. An allusion to the 
repeated attempts to discover the source of the Nile. In 1864, the 
year of the lecture, Sir Samuel Baker succeeded in reaching Albert 
Nyanza. 

34 : 18. — The great continent beyond the sea. An allusion to 
the discovery of America, or possibly to the exploration of the 
polar regions. (Cf. p. 40, note.) 

34 : 20. — River of Life. Revelation 22 : i, 2. 

34 : 21. — Angels desire to look into, i Peter 1:12. 

35 : 8. — A gentle nation. Ruskin would probably give medieval 
Venice as an example. 



36:28.] NOTES. 121 

35 : 23.— Weighing evidence. On July 9, 1864, a German, 
Franz Miiller, murdered an elderly bank-clerk in one of the car- 
riages of the North London Railway. His trial became a matter of 
national interest. The Titnes devoted column after column to the 
evidence during the autumn of 1864. Arnold alludes to the case 
in the Preface to Essays in Criticism (1865), p. ix. It would not 
be difficult to adduce more recent parallels. 

35 : 26. — Its own children. An allusion to the American Civil 
War. The blockade of the Southern ports very seriously interfered 
with England's cotton manufacture, causing great distress among 
the operatives. 

35 : 31. — Stealing six walnuts. Apparently Ruskin is alluding 
to some specific case. Only a few days before the date of the lec- 
ture a Lincolnshire farmer was imprisoned ten days for stealing a 
handful of grain from a neighbor's field. 

36 : 8. — Selling opimm. An allusion to the infamous 'opium 
war' of 1840. China, finding that her people were destroying 
themselves by the use of opium, forbade its importation. As this 
interfered with England's opium interest in India, she declared 
war on China, and compelled her to remove the embargo. 

36 : 25. — Unhappy crazed boy, etc. These again are probably 
specific allusions. Such allusions to every-day matters, familiar to 
his audience, must have added force to the lecture. 

36 : 26. Perplexed i' the extreme. From Othello's dying speech, 
5. 2. 346 : 

Then you must speak 
Of one that loved not wisely but too well ; 
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought 
Perplex'd in the extreme. 

36 : 28. — A man who is bayonetting. This would seem to be the 
Sultan, but no serious atrocities had been committed since the 
Lebanon massacres of i860, and Turkey is not often mentioned in 
The Times during the autumn of 1864. 1863 was the year of the 
Polish insurrection, and Ruskin may be thinking of Russian cruel- 
ties. Richard F. Burton, the traveller and explorer, was sent in 
1863 on a mission to Gelele, king of Dahomey, to express the 
friendly sentiments of Her Majesty's government. Burton pub- 



122 NOTES. [37-. 6. 

lished an account of his travels in 1864, which describes the whole- 
sale human sacrifices of the African chief. 

37 : 6. — The root of all evil, i Timothy 6 : 10. 

37 : 25. — The good Samaritan. See Luke 10 : 30-35. ' And on 
the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave 
them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and what- 
soever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will lepay thee.' 
ver. 35. 

38 : 17. — Scorpion-whips. Cf. Rehoboam's haughty speech to 
his people: ' For whereas my father put a heavy yoke upon you, I 
will put more to your yoke : my father chastised you with whips, 
but I will chastise you with scorpions.' 2 Chronicles 10 : 11. The 
scorpion is a tropical insect with a poisonous sling. The scorpions 
of Rehoboam were probably barbed whips. 

39 : 29. — If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. ' I 
would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of his due 
and wise provision for his household, to obtain as soon as he can, 
by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily — 
however slowly — increasing, series of books for use through life; 
making his little library, of all the furniture in his room, the most 
studied and decorative piece; every volume having its assigned 
place, like a little statue in its niche.' Preface to edition of 1871. 

40 : 6. — Sweet as honey. Perhaps an allusion to Revelation 
10 : 9, 10. 

40 : 9. — Multipliable barley-loaves. An allusion to the miracle 
of the loaves, John 6 : 9 ff. Notice the peculiar fitness of the 
metaphor. 

40 : 26. — Observatory. The observatory at Greenwich furnishes 
the standard time for the British marine, 

41 : 9. — A portion for foxes. Psalm 63 : 10. 

42 : I. — Professor Owen. Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), a dis- 
tinguished biologist. From 1836 to 1856 he was Hunterian pro- 
fessor of comparative anatomy and physiology at the Royal 
College of Surgeons. From 1856 to 1883 he was head of the 
natural history departments in the British Museum. He was 
instrumental in starting the Natural History Museum at South 
Kensington. 

43 : 12, — Ludgate apprentices. Ludgate Hill is a street iu Lon- 



44 ••21.] NOTES. 123 

don leading up to St. Paul's Cathedral. This section of the city 
belongs to the retailers. Miss A. S. Cook quotes from Scott's 
Fortunes of AHgel Chap. I. Master Allan Ramsay, a London 
watchmaker in the reign of James I., often ' left the outer posts of 
his commercial establishment to be maintained by two stout- 
bodied and strong-voiced apprentices, who kept up the cry of, 
" What d'ye lack ? what d'ye lack ?" accompanied with the appro- 
priate recommendations of the articles in which they dealt.' 

44 : 2.— Austrian guns. In July and August of 1849, when 
Venice was reconquered by Austria after the revolt of 1848. 

44 : 13. — Stables of the cathedrals of France. ' The Abbey of 
St. Denis was turned into a market with stalls, and the still 
greater Abbey Church of Cluny has served for a stable for breed- 
ing horses for the French government for many years.' (Miss 
A. S. Cook's edition of Sesame.) 

44 : 18. — Falls of SchafFhausen. The falls of the Rhine near 
Schaffhausen, Switzerland. See Ruskin's description of the fall 
in Modern Painters, II, Chap. II. How have we in America cared 
for Niagara ? 

44 : 19. — Tell's chapel. A small chapel on the eastern shore of 
Lake Lucerne, built to the memory of the legendary hero, 
William Tell. 

44 : 20. — The Clarens shore. The eastern end of the lake, where 
the Castle of Chillon is situated. 

44 : 21. — Not a quiet valley in England, Cf. ' There was a 
rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, 
divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there 
morning and evening — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the 
Light — walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and 
fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for Gods 
nor grass, but for cash (which you did not know the way to get); 
you thought you coula get it by what the Times called " Railroad 
Enterprise." You Enterprised a Railroad — you blasted its rocks 
away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. 
The valley is gone, and the Gods with it; and now, every fool in 
Buxton can be at Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in 
Bakewell at Buxton ; which you think a lucrative process of ex- 
change — you Fools Everywhere.' — Fors Clavigera^ \. 



124 NOTES. [45:17. 

45 : 17. — Firing rusty howitzers. To hear the echo. As a 
further illustration of Ruskin's thought compare the following 
extract from the New Haven Evening Register, May 28, 1900: 
' Fortress Monroe, Va., May 28. — The sun was totally eclipsed at 
8.33 A.M. in a cloudless sky. Thousands of people crowded the 
piers, verandas, and ramparts to watch the marvelous phenom- 
enon, and at the moment the sun was suddenly snuffed out an 
involuntary cheer arose, and every vessel in the Roads whistled 
an accompaniment. The period of totality was about 30 seconds, 
during which time a tiny star hung just below the magnificent 
corona which glowed around the inky disc' 

45 ; 20. — Towers of the vineyards. Cf. Isaiah 5 : 2. 

45 ' 25 — You despise compassion, Fors Clavigera, XXXIV. ' But 
in the use I have just made of the word " compassion," I mean 
something very different from what is usually understood by it. 
Compassion is the Latin form of the Greek word " sympathy " — 
the English for both is "fellow-feeling"; and the condition of 
delight in characters higher than our own is more truly to be under- 
stood by the word '* compassion" than the pain of pity for those 
inferior to our own; but in either case the imaginative understand- 
ing of the natures of others, and the power of putting ourselves in 
their place, is the faculty on which the virtue depends. So that an 
unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.' Compare 
with this what Raskin says of vulgarity in § 28, and his statement 
in § 12 that no vulgar person can ever enter into the society of 
books. The connection of this paragraph with the subject of the 
whole essay is then apparent. 

47 : 24. — Get the stones. Paupers were often set to work at 
breaking stone for the roads. But why does Ruskin speak of it 
in the note as 'the penalty of useless labor'? In country dis- 
tricts paupers were made to dig holes and fill them up again, 
performing useless labor that they might not interfere with the 
employment of others. 

47 : 28. — A certain passage. Matthew 7 : g. 

48 : 28. — Ere the fresh lawns. Milton's Lycidas 25. 26. The 
quotation is not accurate; for 'fresh' read 'high.' 

50 : 18. — The bread of affliction, i Kings 22 : 27. 
50 ; 23.— Lift up his voice. Isaiah 58 : i. 



54 -'SI-] NOTES. 125 

50 : 25.— Ye fast for strife, etc. Adapted from Isaiah 58 : 4, 7. 
51 : 10.— Satanellas,— Roberts,— Fausts. Satanella; or, the Power 

of Love, by Balfe; Robert le Diable, by Meyerbeer; and Faust, by 
Gounod. Operas in which the devil appears as a character. 

51 : 13. — Dio, Italian for God. 

51 : 17. — Gas inspired. Cf. 26 : 26. 

52 : 8. — Carburetted hydrogen ghost. The particular carburet of 
hydrogen which Ruskin seems to have in mind is methane or 
marsh-gas (CH4), which results from the slow decay of organic 
matter, and which, rising over stagnant pools, caures by its phos- 
phorescent glow the ignis fatutis or Avill o' the wisp. It is possible 
that Ruskin has this phenomenon in mind and that // is the ' ghost.' 
The unhealthiness of this poisonous vapor would then be con- 
trasted with the 'healthy expiration ' of the next line. It would 
mean the misleading light of a stagnant religion. But, this same 
methane is the principal constituent of illuminating-gas, and in 1864, 
the year of the lecture, the theatres of London and New York were 
exhibiting a ghost illusion invented by Professor Pepper of London 
and called from him ' Pepper's ghost'. This illusion, which is ex- 
plained in Xh^ Journal of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (vol. 
77, p. 418), is produced by means of transparent mirrors and strong 
gas-reflectors. It seems hardly accurate to speak of the illusion as 
a ' carburetted hydrogen ghost,' but this interpretation gains prob- 
ability from the ' gas-lighted and gas-inspired ' of 51 : 17, and 
the 'property man ' of 52 : 7, and I am inclined to think it the 
better explanation. The passage illustrates Ruskin's unchastened 
fancifulness, (I owe the suggestion of the second interpretation 
to Mr. Bates' edition of Sesame.) 

52 : 9. — Lazarus. See Luke 16 : 20. 

52 : 12. — The only holy or Mother Church. For the idea cf. 
Lowell's Vision of Sir Lauufal. 

53 : 25. — The idolatrous Jews. Ezekiel 8 : 7-12. 

54 : 14. — Chalmers. Thomas Chalmers (17S0-1847), a great 
Scotch divine, noted for his ability as a preacher and organizer. 
The anecdote is told in the Memoirs of Chalmers by his son-in- 
lav/, Rev. William Hanna, Vol. IV, p. 445 (New York, 1852). 

54 : 31.— The last of our great painters. Turner (1 774-1851), 
the English landscape artist in whose defense Ruskin wrote Modern 



126 NOTES. [55:24. 

Painters. His work may best be seen at the National Gallery, 
London. The public galleries of New York and Boston have a 
few good examples. ' Another feeling traceable in several of his 
[Turner's] former works is an acute sense of the contrast between 
the careless interests and idle pleasures of daily life, and the state 
of those whose time for labor, or knowledge, or delight is passed 
for ever. There is evidence of this feeling in the introduction of 
the boys at play in the churchyard at Kirkby Lonsdale.' Mod- 
ern Painters, IV, Chap. XVIII, § 24. 

55 : 24.— Narrowly to consider us. See following note. 

55 '- 25.— The fallen kings of Hades. This paragraph deserves 
careful study as illustrating Ruskin's style at its noblest. Notice 
the rhythm of the language, the splendid use of metaphor, and the 
poetical color of the whole. Each word and phrase is surcharged 
with figurative meaning. What does Ruskin mean by ' fingering 
the robes they lie in, 'and by 'incantation of the heart '? The idea 
of the city of sleeping kings, and in places the language of the pas- 
sage, is suggested by Isaiah 14 : 4-23, where the prophet is fore- 
telling the doom of Babylon. The whole passage should be read, 
but the following are the most significant verses : ' Hell from be- 
neath is moved for thee [tfie king of Babylon] to meet thee at thy 
coming : it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of 
the earth ; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the 
nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also be- 
come weak as we ? Art thou become like unto us ? . . . They that 
see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, 
Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake king- 
doms ? . . . All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in 
glory, every one in his own house.' Isaiah 14 : g, 10, 16, iS. See 
what is gained by the substitution of 'Hades' for 'hell.' The 
fallen kings of Homer's Hades are also thought of as weak. ' I 
entreated with many prayers the strengthless heads of the dead.' 
Odyssey, 1 1, 29. And of Agamemnon we read, ' But it might not be, 
for he had no stedfast strength nor power at all in moving, such 
as was aforetime in his supple limbs.' Odyssey, 11, 393, 394. In 
this particular application of the passage in Isaiah Ruskin may be 
indebted to Shelley's Adonais, stanzas 45, 46, where, at the coming 
of the soul of Keats, 



57--I9-] NOTES. 12/ 

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 

Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 

Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 

Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought 

And as he fell and as he lived and loved 

Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 

Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved ; 

Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 

And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, 
But whose transmitted effluence can not die 
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 

* Thou art become as one of us,' they cry, 

* It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
Swung blind in unascended majesty. 
Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. 

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng ! ' 

Jean Ingelow has used the same passage of Isaiah in The Dead 
Year. 

56 : 5. — That old Scythian custom. See Herodotus, 00k IV, 
§ 73. Ruskin had already used the idea in one of his early poems, 
The Scythian Guest. 

56: 17. — The ice of Caina. Caina is the first division of the 
ninth and lowest circle of Dante's Inferno in which are punished 
those guilty of treachery to their own blood, among them Cain, 
the first fratricide. The guilty spirits are fixed in the ice of the 
frozen lake. Inferno, 32. 

57 : 8. — Living peace. * To be carnally minded is death ; but to 
be spiritually minded is life and peace.' Romans 8 : 6. The Greek 
in the foot-note is the latter half of this verse. 

57 : II. — All other kingships, Cf. Queen's Gardens, §^51, 52. 

57 : 19. — Visihle governments. Munera Pulveris, § 122 : * The 
visible government is that which nominally carries on the national 
business ; determines its foreign relations, raises taxes, levies 
soldiers, orders war or peace, and otherwise becomes the arbiter 
of the national fortune. The invisible government is that exer- 
cised by all energetic and intelligent men, each in his sphere, reg- 
ulating the inner will and secret ways of the people, essentially 



128 NOTES. [57 : 29. 

forming its character, and preparing its fate. Visible governments 
are the toys, etc.' 

57: 29. — People-eating, ^rjuo^opo'i ftcx(jiX€vi, Iliad, i, 231, 
the epithet bestowed by Achilles on Agamemnon. 

58 : 14. — II gran rifiuto. 'The great refusal' (i.e. really to 
reign). Dante, Inferno, 3, 60. 

58 : 20. — When he will estimate his dominion hy the force of it. 
' But when men are true and good, and stand shoulder to shoulder, 
the strength of any nation is in its quantity of life, not in its land 
or gold. The more good men a state has, in proportion to its ter- 
ritory, the stronger the state. And as it has been the madness of 
economists to seek for gold instead of life, so it has been the mad- 
ness of kings to seek for land instead of life. They want the town 
on the other side of the river, and seek it at the spear-point : it 
never enters their stupid heads that to double the honest souls in 
the town on this side of the river would make them stronger 
kings.' Queen of the Air, § 121. 

58 : 21. — Trent cuts you a cantel out here. Cf. the scene in the 
Archdeacon's house at Bangor in which Hotspur and Glendower 
wrangle over the division of the kingdom. Hotspur says : 

See how this river comes me cranking in, 
And cuts me from the best of all my land 
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out. 
rU have the current in this place dammed up; 
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run 
In a new channel, fair and evenly. 

Henry /K, Part /., 3, i, 98-103. 

58 : 22. — Ehine rounds you a castle. Alluding to the dispute be- 
tween France and Prussia over the boundary of their territories. 

58 : 23. — King of men, the arac dvSpojv of Homer. Iliad, i, 
172 et passim. 

58 : 24. — Go, and he goeth. Luke 7 : 8. 

58 : 26. — Turn your people, etc. Cf. Note on 58 : 21. A few 
lines farther on in the same scene Glendower says : 

Come, you shall have Trent turned. 

59 : 5. — Do and teach. ' Whosoever therefore shall break one of 
these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be 
called the least in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do 



6o:2.] NOTES. I2g 

and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of 
heaven.' Matthew 5 : 19. 

59 : 8.— The moth and the rust. This paragraph illustrates ad- 
mirably the use to which Ruskin puts his knowledge of the Bible. 
Its words are graven so deep in the tables of his memory that they 
rise unconsciously to his lips whenever he has need of them. The 
whole paragraph is based on Matthew 6: ig, 20. ' Lay not up for 
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth cor- 
rupt, and where thieves break through and steal : but lay up for 
yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth 
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' Rus- 
kin lets his fancy play on these verses and creates from them the 
' Moth-kings,' the ' Rust-kings,' the ' Robber-kings ; ' the * broid- 
ered robe,' the * helm and sword,' the ' jewel and gold.' And then, 
fusing Greek with Hebrew, he gives us the shuttle of Athena, the 
forge of Vulcan, and the red gold of Apollo. The treasures to be 
laid up in heaven he interprets as wisdom, and immediately he re- 
members the praise of wisdom in Job 28. (Read the chapter for 
its own sake and for the light it throws on this passage.) 

59 : 24. — Neither should it be valued. Job 28 : ig. 

59: 25. — Athena's shuttle. Athena, the 'Angel of Conduct,' 
was the inventor of weaving. Ruskin may have been thinking of 
the story of Minerva (Athena) and Arachne, Ovid, Metamorphoses, 
6, I seq. 

59 : 26. — Vulcanian force. Vulcan (Hephaestus) is the * Angel of 
Toil,' and presides over all labor done by means of fire. He- 
phaestus forges armor for Achilles in the XVIII Iliad. 

59 : 28.— Delphian cliffs. Delphi, on the southern slope of Mt. 
Parnassus in Phocis, was the seat of the oracle of Apollo. By the 
mention of Delphi, Ruskin shows us that he is thinking of Apollo 
as the god of wisdom, the inspirer of prophecy, the ' Ange 1 of 
Thought.' 

59 : 28. — Deep-pictured tissue ; i.e. with the design woven into 
the tissue. Such was the web of Penelope and of Arachne. 

59 : 2g. — Potable gold. Alluding to the attempts of the medi- 
eval alchemists to prepare a dr nkable gold, which would be a 
sovereign cure for all ills of the flesh. 

60 : 2. — The path which no fowl knoweth. Job 28:7. 



130 NOTES. [60:21. 

60 : 21, — The only book, properly to be called a book. Unto This 
Last, Essays on Political Economy (i860). The quotation is from 
a foot-note in Essay IV, entitled Ad Valorem. 

61 : 6. — Half thorns and half aspen leaves. What do they sym- 
bolize ? 

62 : 16. — British Constitution. Notice the pun. 

62 : 19. — Corn laws. Laws imposing a duty on all grain im- 
ported into the kingdom, thus making bread dearer. The laws 
were repealed in 1846. 

62 : 23. — Not of robbers'. See note on I : Title. 



LILIES. 

OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 

67 : Title. — Lilies. Lilies are the fairest and most fragrant of 
flowers — the queenliest of the herbs of the fields. Ruskin means 
them to stand as the symbols of the kind and noble deeds which 
blossom in the garden of a true woman. Perhaps, with a confu- 
sion of metaphor, he means us to think of them as typical of 
woman herself, for in 93 : 22 he compares a girl to a narcissus 
(of the lily family). Remember the associations which cling 
about the lily; how, for example, in old paintings of the Annunci- 
ation one finds always a lily as the symbol of the Virgin's stain- 
less purity. Remember, too, Tennyson's 'lily-maid of Astolat.' 

67 : Motto. — Septuagint. The translation of the Old Testa- 
ment into Greek, made, so tradition says, by about seventy Alex- 
andrian scholars in the second century B.C. It is the authorized 
version of the Greek Church. 

67: 27. — In the truest sense, kingly. Ruskin may have been 
influenced in this discussion of true kingship by Carlyle's similar 
doctrine in Heroes and Hero-worship, Lecture VI. Carlyle lays 
greater stress on inborn, natural ability, and less on that acquired 
by education. 

58 : ^. — Likeness of a kingly crown. Paradise Lost, 2, 673, 
where Milton is describing the monster Death. The advance 
ment of such kings is an ' advancement in death.' 



76:21] NOTES. I3I 

71 : 4. — Shakespeare has no heroes. Ruskin gives his definition 
of a hero in 75 : 7-10. 

71 : 22-29. — Orlando, etc. If these names are not familiar they 
may be found in any dictionary of noted names of fiction. 

72 : 2. — The catastrophe of every play, etc. The very nature of 
tragedy demands that the hero should suffer for his own folly or 
fault. Aristotle describes the ideal tragic hero as ' a man who is 
not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought 
about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty ' 
{Poetics, 13, 3). Does this weaken Ruskin's argument ? 

72 : 17. — Oh, murderous coxcomb! Othello, 5, 2, 233. 

73 : 12. — Unlessoned girl. Portia calls herself 

An unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised. 

Merchant 0/ Venice, 3, 2, 161. 

74: II. — Walter Scott. Ruskin's admiration for Scott dates 
from his earliest childhood, when his father used to read the 
Waverley novels aloud of an evening. See his discussion of Scott 
in Modern Painters, III, Chap. XVI, in which he speaks of him as 
'the great representative of the mind of the age in literature.' 
See also Fors Clavigera, XXXI-XXXIII. (I have not thought 
it necessary to place the various characters of Scott mentioned 
in this paragraph. See any dictionary of fiction.) 

76 : 3. — Dante's great poem. It is certainly an exaggeration to 
call the Divine Cotnedy a love-poem to Dante's dead lady, yet 
Ruskin is right in his main argument. Dante takes Beatrice, the 
maiden whom he had loved in his youth, as the symbol of the high- 
est wisdom. She it is who sends Virgil to his aid {Inferno, 2) ; it 
is she who conducts him through Paradise, where Virgil can no 
longer accompany him. 

76: 17. — A knight of Pisa. Pannuccio dal Bagno. See Ros- 
setti's Dante and His Circle, p. 211 (Boston, 1887), for the quota- 
tion. 

76 : 21. — Dante Kossetti (182S-1882). An English poet and 
painter of Italian parentage. As a painter he belongs to the Pre- 
Raphaelite School which received Ruskin's warm approval. See 
the essay entitled Pre-Kaphaelitism (1851.) His best poems are The 



132 NOTES. Vll--'2.^' 

Blessed Damozel and The House of Life. He was a personal friend 
of Ruskin. 

77 : 29. — Andromache, Cassandra, etc. Their stories may be 
learned from any classical dictionary. 

78: 14. — Una. The heroine of Spenser's Faerie Queene, I. 

78 : 15. — Britomart. A female knight, the personification of 
chastity. Faerie Queene, III. 

78 : 19. — Lawgiver of all the earth. Moses. See Exodus 
2 : 5-10. 

78 : 22. — Spirit of wisdom. The goddess Neith or Nit, identi- 
fied by the Greeks with Athena. 

78 : 26. — Athena of the olive-helm. Ruskin has treated at 
length the myth of Athena in The Queen of the Air. For the sig- 
nificance of the olive helm see § 38. 

78 : 27. — To faith in whom. As patron divinity of Athens, the 
cradle of art and literature. 

81 : 9.— Ah, wasteful woman ! etc. The quotation is from Pat- 
more's Angel in the House, Book I {The Betrothal), in the section 
entitled ^tna and the Moon, Accompaniments (Boston, 1856, 
page 107). It is omitted in later editions. The Angel in the 
House is full of pure, chivalric sentiment sweetly expressed ; but 
surely Ruskin is ranking it too high. 

83 : 26. — Vestal temple. Vesta was the goddess of the hearth. 

83 : 30. Rock in a weary land. Isaiah 32 : 2. 

83 : 31. — Pharos. A lighthouse ; so called because of the fa- 
mous lighthouse built by King Ptolemy Philadelphus on the isl- 
and of Pharos in the Bay of Alexandria. 

84 : 8.— Ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion. Jeremiah 
22 : 14. 

84 ; 25. — La donna e mobile, etc. 'Woman is inconstant as a 
feather in the wind.' The words of a popular aria in Verdi's 
opera Rigoletto, Act III, sc. ii. 

84 : 27. — Variable as the shade. Scott's Marmion, Canto VI, 
Stanza 30. 

84 : 31. — I have been trying. Notice Ruskin's careful sum- 
maries. 

85 : 19. — That poet who is distinguished, etc. — Wordsworth. 
In Modern Painters, I, Chap. Ill, Fluskin speaks of him as ' the 



89 : i6.] NOTES. 1 33 

keenest-eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in 
nature.' And again, ibid.. Ill, Chap. XVI, 'the intense penetra- 
tive depth of Wordsworth.* In Fiction — Fair and Foul Ruskin 
speaks of the ' serial purity and healthful Tightness of his quiet 
song.' 

85 : 25.— Three years she grew. The poem may be read in full 
on p. 143 of Arnold's Selections from Wordsworth. 

87 : 4. — ' A countenance in which did meet,* etc. From Words- 
worth's poem beginning ; 

She was a phantom of delight. 

See Arnold's Selections, p. 148. Ruskin quotes from the same 
poem in § 78. 

88 : 8. — Valley of Humiliation. The phrase is from Pilgrim s 
Progress (Temple ed., p. 60) : ' So they went on together, reiterat- 
ing their former discourses, till they came to go down the Hill. 
Then said Christian, As it was difficult coming up, so it is danger- 
ous going down. Yes, said Prudence, so it is ; for it is a hard 
matter for a man to go down into the valley of Humiliation, as 
thou art now, and to catch no slip by the way.' What does Rus- 
kin mean ? 

88 : II.— Children gathering pebbles. — Cf. the following from 
Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, Vol. II, Chap. XXVII : 'I do 
not know what I may appear to the world ; but to myself I seem 
to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and divert- 
ing myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier 
shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undis- 
covered before me.' Sir Isaac's words were probably suggested 
in their turn by Milton's Paradise Regained, 4 : 321-330. 

88 : 15. — It is not the object of education to turn a woman into a 
dictionary. Nor a man either. What are the peculiar character- 
istics of a dictionary ? 

89 : 16.—' For all who are desolate and oppressed.' ' That it may 
please thee to defend, and provide for, the fatherless children, 
and widows, and all who are desolate and oppressed, W^e beseech 
thee to hear us, Good Lord.' The Litany of the Anglican Prayer 
Book, 



134 NOTES, [90:1. 

90 ; I. — Consecrated mjrrh. Myrrh is a bitter herb which was 
used in the ritual of the temple (Exodus 30. 33) and was one of the 
gifts brought to Christ by the Magi (Matthew 2:11). Ruskin uses 
it to symbolize the bitterness of religious intolerance. The phrase 
* a bundle of myrrh ' is found in Song of Solomon i ; 13. 

90 : 7.— Spirit of the Comforter, See John 15 : 26. 

93 : 29. — Her household motions. See note on 87 : 4. 

95 : 29. — Dean of Christ Church. Christ Church is one of the 
principal colleges at Oxford. Ruskin matriculated there in 1836. 
The dean of Christ Church in 1864 was Henry George Liddeil, 
joint author of Liddeil and Scott's Greek lexicon. 

95 : 29. — Master of Trinity. Trinity is the college at Cambridge 
which numbers among its sons Sir Isaac Newton and Lord Tenny- 
son. The master of Trinity at the time of this lecture was Wil- 
liam Whewell. 

98 : 3. — Sharp arrows of the mighty. ' What shall be given 
unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? 
Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.' Psalm 120 : 3, 4. 
An example of Ruskin's free use of Biblical phrases. In the Psalm 
the ' sharp arrows ' and the coals are probably both thought of as 
punishments. Ruskin's sentence might be paraphrased as follows: 
You think that your furnaces are putting weapons in your hands 
which will make you mighty, but you will find punishment as well, 
'coals of juniper.' Coals of juniper (or of broom, as the Hebrew 
should be translated) are especially hot. 

98 : 9. — Mersey, etc. For the geography the student is referred 
to a map of Great Britain. 

98 : 22. — Island of .Egina. An island in the Saronic Gulf about 
20 miles from the Piraeus. There was a temple on the island to 
Athena mentioned by Herodotus (3. 59), the ruins of which are 
still to be seen. 

98 : 23. — Minerva. Minerva (Athena) was the goddess of wis- 
dom. 

99 : 13.— As sheep having no shepherd. Matthew 9 : 36. 

99 : 20. — The great Lawgiver. Cf. note on 78 : 19. See Exodus 
17 :6. 
99 • 30. — An XTnkncwn ifod. See Acts 17 : 23. 
lOl : 25. — Power of the royal hand. The sovereigns of England 



108 .10.] NOTES. 135 

from Edward the Confessor to Anne were believed to have the 
power of curing scrofula by their touch. 

102: II, 12. — Lord, Lady. These etymologies are both wrong. 
Lady < O.E. hldfdige, probably meaning not loaf-giver, but loaf- 
kneader. Lord < O.E. hld/ord, supposed to be an abbreviation 
of hlafweard (loaf- ward), one who guards the food of the commu- 
nity. (Skeal's Principles of English Etymology, 1st Series, pp. 425, 
426.) Does this weaken Ruskin's argument? 

102 : 21. — Poor representatives of her master. * Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me.' Matthew 25 : 40. 

102 : 22. — Ministering of their substance. See Luke 8 : 2, 3. 
X03 : 3. — In breaking of bread. When Christ appeared after his 

resurrection to the two disciples at Emmaus. See Luke 24: 30, 31. 

103 : 24. — Rex et Regina. The Latin regere means originally to 
'keep from doing wrong,' to 6\rect\ cf. past participle rectus, 
right. 

104: 12. — Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9 : 6. 

104 : 17.— Dei Gratia. By the grace of God. British coins of 
the last reign bear (in abbreviation) the legend: 'Victoria Dei 
Gratia Britanniae Regina Fidei Defensor.' 

104 : 25. — Myrtle crown. The myrtle is an evergreen shrub, 
beautiful, fragrant, lowly, and tender. It was sacred to Venus. 
Why does Ruskin choose it for the crown of ideal womanhood ? 

105 : 18.— Myriad-handed. From the Greek. 

105 : 30. — One entire and perfect chrysolite. — Othello, 5. 2. 145. 

106 : 30.— Her feet have touched the meadows. Tennyson's 
Maud, I, xii, 23, 24. 

107 : 4.— Even the light harebell. Scott's Lady of the Lake, 
Canto I, stanza 18. Ruskin is not quite accurate. Scott says * the 
slight harebell. ' 

107 : 23. — Come, thou south. Song of Solomon 4 : 16: 
'Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my 
garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.' 

108 : 10. — Frantic Dances of Death. Ruskin's reference in the 
foot-note explains what he means. The phrase was probably sug- 
gested by Holbein's famous ' Dance of Death,' a set of prints, 
didactic in purpose, illustrating the constant presence of death. 



136 NOTES, [108: 13. 

108 : 13.— Banks of wild violet, etc. Cf. Midsummer Nights' 
Dream, 2. I. 272. 

108 : 16. — Dante's great Matilda. Dante, having reached the 
Earthly Paradise at the summit of the mountain of Purgatory, 
comes to the stream of Lethe — 

My feet advanced not ; but my wondering eyes 

Passed onward, o'er the streamlet to survey 

The tender May-bloom, flushed through many a hue, 

In prodigal variety: and there, 

As object, rising suddenly to view, 

That from our bosom every thought beside 

With the rare marvel chases, I beheld 

A lady all alone, who, singing, went. 

And culling flower from flower, wherewith her way 

Was all o'erpainted. 

Pur^atorio, 28, 34-42 (trans. Cary). 

Matilda has been interpreted allegorically by Scartazzini as 
meaning the active ministry of a true pastor. Perhaps this ex- 
plains Ruskin's allusion. 

X08 : 19. — Come into the garden, Maud. 

Come into the garden, Maud, 

For the black bat, night, has flown. 
Come into the garden, Maud, 

I am here at the gate alone; 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 

And the musk of the rose is blown. 

Tennyson"'s Maud, I, xxii, 1-6. 

108 : 29. — The Larkspur listens. Maud, I, xxii, 63, 64. 

109 : 12. — Madeleine. See John 20 : 11-18. 

109 : 16. — Sought him in vain all through the night. ' By night 
on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth : I sought him, but 
I found him not.' Song of Solomon 3 : i. 

109 : 17. — That old garden. Eden. See Genesis 3 : 24. 

109 : 21. — To see the fruits of the valley. ' I went down into the 
garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether 
the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded.' Song of Solo- 
mon 6:11. 

109 : 26. — The sanguine seed. The crimson seed of the pome- 
granate. But why ' sanguine ' ? Ruskin may have had in mind the 



no: 4-] NOTES. l^^jf 

famous sentence of Tertullian (second and third centuries a.d.) : 
'Sanguis martyrum semen est ecclesias.' (This is the form in 
which the aphorism is commonly met with. Tertullian's words 
are: ' Plures efficimur, quoties metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis 
Christianorum.' Apologeticus, cap. 50.) 

109 : 28. — The pathsides where he has sown. See Matthew 13 : 4. 

109 : 30. — Take us the foxes. Song of Solomon 2:15. 

1 10 : 4. — Shall the foxes have holes, etc. This sentence, like the 
whole paragraph, is a mosaic of Biblical phrases. 'The foxes 
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of man 
hath not where to lay his head.' Matthew 8:20. 'I tell you 
that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immedi- 
ately cry out.' Luke ig : 40. ' And Jacob went out from Beer- 
sheba, and went to Haran. . . . And he took of the stones of that 
place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to 
sleep.' Genesis 28 : 10, 11. 



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